200,000 new robots go to work each year.

THE NUMBERS: Number of industrial & services robots installed, 2013* –

* International Federation of Robotics, in World Robotics 2014

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The first of the robot tribe was Unimate, a mechanical arm used to cool hot metal auto-parts, which took its place on the line at the GM plant in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1961. Since then, 2.65 million industrial and services robots have gone to work, including 200,000 last year alone: each day, 500 tireless, efficient, uncomplaining, gleaming auto-workers, mine-field-clearers, milkers, arc-welders, soldiers, and electronics-assemblers, elbow to elbow-joint with uneasy human colleagues. Background by place and job:

Robots by Industry: Auto manufacturing was the birthplace of industrial robotics, and is still its heart, accounting for about a third of all new robot installations last year. As the new-robot figures show, though, other industries which deal with hot material and precision installation – machine-making, plastics, electronics – are catching up. Dairy is the leading robot-employer in agriculture; military uses (mine-clearing in particular) account for about half of all services robots.

Robots by Country: The International Federation of Robotics’ most recent annual report, World Robotics 2014, reports that Korea is now the world’s most ‘robotized’ economy, with 4.4 robots per hundred human workers. Long-time leader Japan is second at 3.2 robots per hundred workers. Then come Germany at 2.8; Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium clustered around 1.7.  The U.S. is 7th, at 1.5 robots per hundred human workers. By total working robot population, though, Japan still leads with 306,000; the United States is second at 226,000 and Korea third at 176,000. China is adding robots fastest, though, and the Federation thinks it will have the world’s largest count of working robots by 2017.

Robots in the Home: The largest group of robots works in the homes of the wealthy. The first of this class – Sweden’s floor-vacuuming “Trilobite”– went on sale in 2001. Fourteen years later, families worldwide are buying about 2.7 million domestic-service robots a year: vacuuming Roombas, gardening Robomows, the $300 Looj for spouts and gutters (a bit like a drone, requires operation from a distance), the $130 Grillbot for post-barbecue cleanup, and another 1.3 million robot toys and entertainers. Next up are robotic security guards, and a “personal transport” robot (like a hands-free Segway) set to debut in Tokyo this spring.

FURTHER READING:

Global highlights from the International Federation of Robotics’ World Robotics 2014: http://www.ifr.org/news/ifr-press-release/accelerating-demand-for-industrial-robots-will-continue-658/

The Ann Arbor-based Robotics Industry Association on a boom year for American robot-makers and robot-users (record production, above 27,685 industrial robots built) produced: http://www.robotics.org/content-detail.cfm/Industrial-Robotics-News/North-American-Robotics-Market-has-Strongest-Year-Ever-in-2014/content_id/5219

And the White House’s “Road to Cutting-Edge Robots” plan: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/20/road-cutting-edge-robots

20 minutes into the future –

The future of dairy – Vermont’s robot milkers: http://digital.vpr.net/post/more-and-more-cows-are-giving-milk-robots

The future of garment-making – The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ponders a robotic seamstress and a non-human American garment industry: http://www.livescience.com/20814-pentagon-robot-sewing-machines-aim-china-factories.html

The future of battle – An essay from the Brookings Institution’s Peter Singer (a different one, not the philosopher) on military robots and the law of war: http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2009/02/winter-robots-singer

The future of home life – The New York Times looks at domestic robots, from gutter-cleaner and chimney sweep to litterbox pal: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/garden/10-home-robots-to-lighten-your-domestic-chores.html?_r=0

And the future of masculinity (video) – Passive, outmoded future-man sits glumly in chair, as “DynaMaid” mockingly inquires about his supposed ‘hard day at work’ and brings him a beer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q7Uh1SleWQ

The shapeless thing to come –

“You could probably smash this thing with a hammer a whole bunch of times and it would still keep coming for you.” The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has a video of a squashy robot http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/freaky-boneless-robot-walks-on-soft-legs

And its primitive ancestor – Carnegie Mellon University’s Robot Hall of Fame looks back at “Unimate”: http://www.robothalloffame.org/inductees/03inductees/unimate.html

And the big question –

Hundreds of thousands of robots take up strategic positions in heavy industry, the military, agriculture, and medicine.  Millions more, meanwhile, populate government agencies, corporate HQs, and the homes of the wealthy.  What could go wrong?  The classics of robot arts and lit. offer some mostly gloomy peeks into the future:

Czech polymath Karel Capek invented the word “robot” for his 1921 play R.U.R..  (From the Czech word for “work.”  “R.U.R.” stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” or in Czech Rossumovi universalni roboti .) The predictable thing happens: http://www.amazon.com/R-U-R-Rossums-Uiniversal-Karel-Capek/dp/0887347991

Japan’s Astro-Boy (the first robot cartoon and anime character, 1951) was by contrast a selfless, generous friend to his human brothers and sisters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy_%28character%29

Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s Cyberiad (1965) predicts that robots will ultimately replace humans, & probably it’s for the best: http://english.lem.pl/index.php/works/novels/the-cyberiad

While Californian Philip K. Dick, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968),guesses that humans and robots will lose the ability to distinguish themselves from one another: http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Runner-Movie-Tie-In-Edition-Philip/dp/0345350472

And Daniel Wilson’s How to Survive a Robot Uprising (2005) has useful hints and tips when in case your Roomba, smart house, or assembly-line partner suddenly turns on you. (If it’s the house, you’ve had it.) Laugh while you can, human: http://www.robotuprising.com/home.htm

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