Citation
Loughlin, C. (2011), "Market pull and market push", Industrial Robot, Vol. 38 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2011.04938caa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Market pull and market push
Article Type: Editorial From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3
The themes of this issue are mobile robots and medical robots and we include a selection of award-winning papers from the CLAWAR 2010 Conference (climbing and walking robots).
While robots in our factories continue to make significant advances both in the variety of tasks that can be performed as well as their precision and speed of operation, it is the application of robots outside our factory walls that I believe has the greatest potential.
Worldwide annual sales of industrial robots are currently running at about 100,000 per year (UN, World Robotics 2010). This number does of course fluctuate year-on-year along with global demand, but I do not believe that anyone is expecting this number to change drastically in what is now a pretty mature industry.
In contrast, the fledgling mobile robots market already stands at well over a million units per year and is almost certainly still in the early rising stages of a typical “S” curve. Unit values are of course lower than for industrial units, but the above figure is for robots that do a useful function (i.e. vacuum cleaning), and excludes the toys-end of the market.
Every year about 50 million cars are manufactured around the world (International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA)). This represents a great deal of money that we are now well accustomed to spending on “useful machines”. From this, I would conclude that if we can develop mobile robots that are as useful to us as cars, then we will find a way to afford them – perhaps even to the point that they will be considered as essential, and not the luxuries that they may currently be perceived to be.
If a car costs US$20,000 and lasts five years then simple maths tells us that it is costing us US$4,000 per year to own and perhaps another US$4,000 per year for fuel and service. $8,000 per year is a lot of money, and even if useful mobile robots are only ever perceived to be worth a fraction of this to us, we still end up with considerable scope for mobile robot manufacturers to create significant businesses.
The real question is – what jobs are there that are currently performed by people, but could be performed by a machine using present day technology?
Vacuum cleaning of floors and carpets (1 million in 2009) is already pretty well established and is likely to become more so as performance improves. Window cleaning is a pretty obvious target and should be viable in domestic settings as well becoming indispensable for office blocks. Lawn mowing is certainly viable (2,600 in 2009) and should have environmental benefits.
For the elderly, a robot that can move around a normal house could become a real asset both for the transportation of food, books, etc.; as well as a helping hand providing physical support and a mobile repository for all the bits and pieces that would otherwise be left out of reach. And a communication centre to provide control of electronic devices like TVs and music centres, as well as a link to the outside world.
Some of these developments and their purchase will be driven by the market pull of consumer demand as a grateful solution for tedious tasks. For the more ambitious applications, I would expect that the market will have to be developed by market push, creating demand by the demonstration of previously unconsidered benefits.
Clive Loughlin