Robotics Predictions for 2022 from Industry Experts

Ahead of 2022, The Robot Report asked some of the leading minds in the robotics industry to look into the future and say what the world holds in 2022. 

Juan Aparicio, Vice President of Products at READY Robotics

According to him, more and more robots will continue to be used, and their number will grow in internal logistics and services. Asia will remain the leader in installations. Successful deployment will continue to allow people to focus on the most important tasks.

The main obstacles will continue to be labor shortages and supply chain fragility. Manufacturers will have to show ingenuity in deployment, using less equipment and/or turning to the secondary use market.

Aparicio said that consolidation in the industry will continue. The price of sensors and other robot equipment will keep falling, allowing new startups to offer robotic solutions in non-traditional industries such as construction and restaurants.

As more robots are installed and more people interact with them, the need for ease of use and interoperability will grow. In addition, more companies will realize that robotics is not a one-off tool, but a central part of their path to digitalization.

He noted that it will be more important than ever for companies to invest in developing internal expertise, avoiding the temptation of excessive automation and starting with lower-risk solutions that are not black boxes for engineers and technicians. Retraining and upskilling staff, as well as deliberate choice of automation hardware and software that any worker can quickly master, will still be the key to success. The need for a universal robotic platform will also grow. 

Adam Rodnitzky, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of Tangram Vision

He expects to see even more venture dollars invested in robotics, autonomy and related fields, alongside active mergers and acquisitions. According to Rodnitzky, this is less about labor shortages and more about a better understanding of the areas where robotics can have a positive impact. 

Just as manufacturing automation has displaced semi-skilled labor in multibillion-dollar industries, the same is happening in fruit harvesting and truck driving. Conversely, certain models that displace unskilled labor in speculative markets (for example, sidewalk delivery robots) will begin to face obstacles in raising funds.

Adam Rodnitzky predicts we will see robotics startups in which no team member is a roboticist in the classic sense of the word. This will be driven by the maturity and completeness of available tools for building a robotics company from scratch. 

Deepu Talla, Vice President and General Manager of Embedded and Edge Computing at NVIDIA

According to him, a million times more robots will be built in the virtual world than in the physical one, because developing and testing physical robots is expensive, slow and unsafe before they are fully ready for the real world.

Talla believes 2022 will be a turning point for full-scale use of simulation. Combining the latest artificial intelligence technologies with RTX ray tracing graphics and accurate high-performance physics simulation will accelerate the development of robotics.

Timothy Chung, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

He expects that a significant increase in common, widely available digital infrastructure for robotics, including field robotics datasets, field trials, operational experience and tools, as well as robust virtual environments, will largely close the gap between simulation and reality and will continue to accelerate the global deployment of robots in complex environments like those faced by the DARPA SubT Challenge, and beyond.

Christian Hulgard, CEO of the American division of OnRobot

According to him, "package deal" applications are becoming popular among beginners or small users of robotic automation. Instead of users assembling a robotic application from many different sources, wondering about compatibility, proven track records and total cost of ownership, they increasingly turn to kits offering plug-and-production installation with all components verified to work together from day one.

Hulgard believes this trend will only strengthen in 2022 as we start paying more attention to reducing deployment time. Demand for automation is not declining. The world must offer less customized automation and, to a much greater extent, consider developing ready-made standardized solutions.

Shermin Gotfredsen, Director of Global Sales at ROEQ

Gotfredsen foresees that more players in autonomous mobile robots (AMR) will expand their capabilities, moving beyond manufacturing into other industries such as hospitals, services and e-commerce. There will also be more AMRs that are not limited to indoor movement, with stronger outdoor maneuverability.

In 2022, more attention will be paid to developing third-party ecosystems for AMRs to make deployment simple, fast, safe, reliable and cost-effective, allowing end users to choose mobile robotic equipment that has been tested and verified for compatibility with their AMRs.

Brian Gerkey, Co-founder and CEO of Open Robotics

As the world of collaborative robotics matures, a logical inflection point is emerging. Industries such as healthcare, e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing and others are already deploying a second or third wave of robots. In most cases, these robot purchases differ from those already in place. 

According to Gerkey, interoperability is the next big challenge in robotics. If a robot from supplier A does not communicate with a robot from supplier B, the end user will have problems.

This is a problem the company has been solving at a medical facility in Singapore since 2018, and continues to solve as part of the Open-RMF initiative. It is important not only that robots from different companies can communicate with each other, but also that their "common language" extends to other devices, such as smoke detectors and elevators.

Joe Campbell, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing and Application Development at Universal Robots

He foresees the ease-of-use paradigm of cobots expanding beyond machine tending into complex processes such as welding, cutting and dispensing. Examples include OEMs such as Vectis Automation, which creates robot-based products that welders can configure and program for plasma cutting and MIG welding, and Robot27, which released a popular dispensing kit. The world will also see new convenient application solutions for more complex and heavy-duty cobot tasks that will emerge in 2022.

Campbell predicts an expansion of cloud tools to further simplify cobot programming. The pandemic has made it clear that users need access to their cobots. They also need robot toolkits that help them understand how their application works, gain visibility into issues, and allow them to proactively maintain production and equipment uptime.

Sami Atiya, President of ABB Robotics & Discrete Automation

According to him, we are at the beginning of a decade of transformation. Companies around the world need flexibility to respond to global megatrends, from labor shortages and supply chain uncertainty to rapidly changing consumer behavior, with a sharp increase in personalized online orders combined with growing pressure to ensure sustainability.

Atiya believes that in 2022 we will see greater demand for flexibility and a growing number of companies working in robotics. As artificial intelligence improves robots' ability to adapt and perform more complex tasks, they will continue to move beyond traditional manufacturing into logistics and warehouses, laboratories and even retail stores. 

"Think of self-learning cobots working alongside people and autonomous mobile robots operating in dynamic environments. In this decade, a robot will become as common in your workplace as a smartphone or laptop, and I think 2022 will bring us closer to that reality," said Sami Atiya.