On The Upside: A Decade of Growth and Innovation

Abstract

The robotics community might have defined success in transforming our world in terms of the appearance of real products that perform robotic-assisted surgery or automated warehousing or intelligent toys. Now that the time is up, we can look back and recognize that these products did appear, and the markets chased by the companies seem to be robust. In all cases, the numbers are most easily expressed in billions. Global markets valued in billions have emerged and some companies, whose entire product line is robotics, are raising a good fraction of a billion dollars every year. Therefore, despite the short-term pessimism that drives the erosion of stock prices around the world, it seems that a little long-term optimism is in order. Indeed, however long it takes for the global economy to recover its vigor, the next decade of commercial activity in robotics is likely to be as innovative and surprising as the last.