Mobile Robots Start Rolling In 2001!
Peterborough, NH - ActivMedia Research LLC www.ActivMediaResearch.com -

Today Mobile Robotics are where personal computers were in the early 1980s, poised for proliferation, with more than 3,500% projected growth in units and nearly 2,500% projected growth in dollars over the next five years. Mobile robot sales are expected to soar from $665 million in the year 2000 to more than $17 billion by 2005 according to a recent study by ActivMedia Research, LLC. Unlike their fixed-in-place industrial forebears, mobile `bots are free-ranging devices capable of an increasing range of tasks.

Technologies Coming of Age: Recent accomplishments allow robotics to blossom from programmed arms to intelligent autonomous mobile platforms. Near-term technical opportunities that will increase the rate of adoption include further evolution and cost-reduction in remote sensing, inspection and manipulation.

Enabling Technologies And Hurdles Today: Technical limitations that impede robotic progress include battery weight-to-capacity ratios, improved sensing accuracy-weight-cost ratios, wireless bandwidth limitations and better software / AI developments to support improved guidance and safety systems.

Cost-Benefit Ratio Improving: The Robotics Industry Association reports that in the past decade the price of an average industrial robot dropped to one-fifth of the 1990 cost of an equivalent robot, bringing industrial robotics ROI down to about one to two years.
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