The market of robotics is expanding steadily. Moderate estimates suggest that revenue in the robotics market will cross US$46 billion in 2024. In this market, service robotics dominated the space by going past a volume of US$36 billion.
The annual growth rate of the robotics market, despite being a mature space by now, is close to 10%. At this rate, the field of robotics will be responsible for a market volume of more than US$73 billion by 2029.
This staggering growth rate of robotics suggests that its presence has been widespread. Initially, people believed that robotics would mostly aid industries that involve heavy types of machinery and equipment. However, in reality, it has spread over to many sectors initially thought to be highly unlikely to adopt robotics.
The latest update from a team of researchers working at the Technical University of Munich tells us about the curious innovation of robotic trousers. What are these trousers, and how do they work? Let us see in the next segment.
Robotic Shorts: Supporting People When Walking
The Technical University of Munich researchers have come up with robotic trousers for people to walk more comfortably while spending measurably less energy. The end goal is to empower frail individuals and keep the elderly mobile and healthy for a long time.
While summarizing the uniqueness of the invention and helping us better understand its purpose, Lorenzio Masia, a professor from TUM, said the following:
“We have developed a system that makes people want to move around more. It’s the same concept as the electric bike, but for walking.”
The invention was driven by a vision. While we would discuss the context of it in greater detail, we must know that the research involved a group of ten, and the detailed scientific study was published in Nature Machine Intelligence, 2024, under the title, ‘Soft robotic shorts improve outdoor walking efficiency in older adults.‘ And finally, the robotic trouser solution was named ‘WalkON.’
What Inspired WalkON?
It started with the somewhat common observation that we all know of. People’s walking efficiency declines as they grow older. Mobility gets constrained, hampering independence and quality of life. Outside the controlled laboratory setup, there was hardly any wearable assistive technology that could prove effective as a potential solution for age-related movement challenges.
To address these challenges came the WalkON robotic shorts. They work as a pair of soft robotic shorts designed to enhance walking efficiency for older individuals by assisting with hip flexion. The system benefits immensely from a well-thought-out, compact, and lightweight tendon-driven design that uses a controller based on natural leg movements to autonomously assist leg propagation.
The researchers tested the impact of WalkON by conducting a technology assessment with young adults on a demanding outdoor uphill 500 m hiking trail. Next, they validated their findings with a group of older adults walking on a flat outdoor 400 m track.
Click here to learn how new additive manufacturing help soft robotics go real.
The Impact of WalkON
The impact of WalkON was evident. It reduced the metabolic cost of transport by nearly 18% for young adults. Participants reported a high perceived control, with a mean score of 6.20 out of 7 on a Likert scale. For older adults, the metabolic cost was reduced by nearly 10.5%.
How Does WalkON Work?
In transitioning from standing to walking, two artificial tendons extending from the thigh to a waist belt are pulled upwards, relieving the hip flexors of some of their load. To determine the hip angle and velocity, a measuring device is attached to the tendons. This device sends a signal to the motors precisely at the transition point to the swing phase of walking.
According to researcher and doctoral student Enrica Tricomi:
“The system recognizes how fast or slowly the person is moving, adapts to the respective weight of the legs, and provides individual support accordingly.”
This happens regardless of who is wearing the shorts – an old person or a fit and sporty teenager.
The Future Vision for WalkON
While the researchers have firmly established the impact of WalkON, the vision for the future goes far beyond what it has achieved today. Lorenzo Masia believes that the impact on metabolism has long-term positive implications for health.
“Walking helps them to improve their metabolism, which in turn may have a positive effect on their illness.”
– Masia
The design of the solution is such that it creates a category for itself. Unlike the already available exoskeleton systems, WalkON does not have a rigid frame. It is rather a soft garment that works more like clothing. Talking about the potential of the solution, Prof Lorenzo Masia said:
“In a few years, you will buy a pair of shorts, attach a motor to them, and plug in two cables. The system will then be ready to take you into the mountains.”
Robotic shorts point towards something larger: a trend suggesting that robotics could become ubiquitous across various fields—from textile to health and the combination of it. In the coming segments, we look at three companies that are doing stellar work in the field of robotics.
Click here to learn how robotics can take a cue from nature.
1. NVIDIA (NVDA -3.22%)
NVIDIA stands out in merging AI with robotics, recognizing the growing demand for autonomous machines and AI-enabled robots. Industries are increasingly looking to improve operational efficiency, combat workforce shortages, optimize repetitive tasks, and manage dangerous tasks or environments.
Realizing the potential of AI robots to easily adapt, learn, and perform complex tasks with precision, the company has come up with NVIDIA Robotics for developers to leverage full-stack, accelerated cloud-to-edge systems. Moreover, the company offers acceleration libraries, optimized AI models, and robot-optimizing systems and software.
The AI robot development platform of NVIDIA is known as Isaac. It has AI models and application frameworks that help accelerate the development of AI robots, including autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), manipulators, and humanoids.
The Isaac Manipulator workflow, for instance, helps build AI-enabled robot arms—or manipulators—that can seamlessly perceive, understand, and interact with their environments.
The Isaac perceptor helps quickly develop autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that can perceive, localize, and operate in unstructured environments like warehouses or factories.
Project Groot is an exciting initiative that helps build a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots that inputs multi-modal instructions and past interactions and outputs robot actions.
To give an insight into how robotics companies use NVIDIA’s expertise to build robotic solutions, we can look at the example of Galbot, a robotics company that used NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a reference application for robotics simulation. Galbot used it to validate a vast number of grasps to develop DexGraspNet, a comprehensive simulated dataset for dexterous robotic grasps that can be applied to any dexterous robotic hand.
The volume of variations that could be achieved is mind-boggling, to say the least. DexGraspNet contains 1.32 million ShadowHand grasps on 5,355 objects—two orders of magnitude larger than the previous Deep Differentiable Grasp dataset. It covers more than 133 object categories and contains more than 200 diverse grasps for each object instance.
Many such examples are available in the public domain, where NVIDIA’s solution has helped significantly expedite and accelerate the process of building robotic solutions.
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA -3.22%)
On November 20, 2024, NVIDIA announced reported revenue for the third quarter ended October 27, 2024, of $35.1 billion, up 17% from the previous quarter and up 94% from a year ago.
For the quarter, GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.78, up 16% from the previous quarter and up 111% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was $0.81, up 19% from the prior quarter and up 103% from a year ago.
Explaining the potential of robotics, Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said:
“Enterprises are adopting agentic AI to revolutionize workflows. Industrial robotics investments are surging with breakthroughs in physical AI. And countries have awakened to the importance of developing their national AI and infrastructure.”
2. Symbotic Inc. (SYM +6.93%)
While NVIDIA is more focused on providing the foundational framework for AI-powered robotics to prosper, one company that has been doing stellar work in delivering such solutions is Symbotic. The company claims to have altered the way consumer goods move through the supply chain through its AI-powered robotic technology platform.
The Symbotic solution also comes with intelligent software that can orchestrate advanced robots in a high-density, end-to-end system, leading to a reinvented warehouse automation paradigm, packed with increased efficiency, speed and flexibility.
Despite being a specialized company, Symbotic is present across industries, including retail grocery, food wholesale, consumer-packaged goods, retail general merchandise, footwear and apparel, and food and beverage.
The company keeps investing in innovation regularly. It has more than 275 patents awarded to its name with an R&D investment of US$600 million. The company has filed for more than 600 patents. The company was named to Fast Company’s prestigious list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2024.
Symbotic is working vigorously in the field of Mobile Robotics which involves autonomous bots, machine learning solutions, self-driving vehicles, and many innovative applications of data science technologies. Symbotic’s computer vision lab leverages technologies that improve the ability of its mobile robots to sense and manipulate, resulting in greater accuracy, resilience, and system performance.
Symbotic Inc. (SYM +6.93%)
On November 18, 2024, Symbotic reported its fourth quarter and FY 2024 results. The company posted a revenue of $577 million, net income of $28 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $55 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024. For the full fiscal year 2024, Symbotic reported revenue of $1,822 million, reflecting 55% growth year over year, a net loss of $51 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $96 million.
3. iRobot (IRBT +1.15%)
iRobot is in the field of consumer robotics. With over 30 years of experience in robotics, the company designs and builds innovative home robots, including the Roomba robot vacuum and the Brava family of mopping robots.
iRobot has developed its exclusive operating system that lets users control where, when, and how their robots clean. iRobots most powerful Roomba Combo 10 Max + Autowash Dock, for instance, comes with a host of features, including a retractable mop arm, 100%-enhanced power-lifting solution, a smart scrub that can deliver 2X deeper scrubbing, an automatic dirt disposal system and more.
Its smart features make these robots more convenient and seamless for daily, continuous use. For instance, it can start cleaning at the user’s voice command, it is compatible with Alexa, Google, and Siri, and it can clean even when the user is away.
Today, iRobot stands as a global enterprise that has sold more than 50 million robots worldwide. Its product portfolio features technologies and advanced concepts in cleaning, mapping, and navigation. Honoring this accomplishment, the company launched a new product line in April 2024.
Barry Schliesmann, chief product officer at iRobot, marking the importance of this event, had the following to say:
“As iRobot surpasses more than 50 million robots sold worldwide, we’re honoring that legacy with the introduction of the affordable Roomba Combo Essential, which cleans even better and does more than its predecessor.”
He added:
“This robot makes the iRobot 2-in-1 cleaning experience more accessible to all, be it a recent graduate, a new homeowner, or anyone looking to enjoy the benefits of automated cleaning for the first time.”
Essentially, the iRobot solution caters to a wide range of everyday users who are not working in a tech-intensive, industrialized setup.
On February 26, 2024, iRobot published its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year on December 30, 2023. The quarterly revenue was US$307.5 million, while the yearly revenue was US$890.6 million.
The Future of Robotics
Robots are becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives. There are several areas where robots are entering at a pace faster than anticipated. The emergence of AI has led to the development of sophisticated humanoid robots.
However, experts believe that the future of robots and the field of robotics will thrive on collaboration. They will work hand-in-hand with humans and not replace them.
The proponents of this belief cite the examples of cobots or collaborative robots to assist in factories, construction, hospitals, and even homes. These robots are specialized in design and form to seamlessly merge into existing infrastructure and human expertise to unlock true productivity gains.
The global cobot market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In 2023, the commercial service robotics market in Europe generated around 6.82 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, making it the leading region in the global commercial service robotics market by revenue. In the same year, North America also reported over 5.78 billion U.S. dollars in commercial service robotics revenue.
A relevant study was conducted by Müller and Bostrom (2016), who collected opinions from researchers in the field, including highly cited experts, to get their views on the future. The median estimate of respondents was that there is a one in two chance that high-level machine intelligence will be developed around 2040–2050. However, the chances rose to a 9 in 10 chance by 2075.
These experts expected that systems would move on to superintelligence in less than 30 years thereafter. These estimates sound ambitious and exciting. But the more important question to ask is how near robots should come to humanity!
While the ambit of robotics keeps growing, we must remember that the use of robotics has to be ethical. Its job is to make the lives of people easier. It can help improve healthcare, conduct delivery of essential services in remote areas, help disseminate knowledge, and leave a positive impact on many more essential areas.
However, the rampant and abundant use of robotic applications without checks and balances might lead to unwarranted surveillance, data breaches, and the loss of privacy rights. Companies and researchers spending resources on the development of robotics must be driven by a greater purpose than just improving the bottom line.
Click here for a list of top robotics companies.
