A robot for every home?

BANGALORE: The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has released its 2003 World Robotics survey, which says that robot orders in the first half of 2003 were up by 26%, the highest level ever recorded. Growth rates reached 35% in North America, 25% in Europe and 18% in Asia.

There are now at least 770,000 robots at work, including 350,000 in Japan, 233,000 in the European Union and about 104,000 in North America.

Robots are coming to our homes too. At the end of 2002 more than 50,000 autonomous vacuum cleaners and lawn-mowing robots were in operation. By the end of 2006 a tenfold increase is predicted.

"They will not only clean our floors, mow our lawns and guard our homes but they will also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs", says the survey.

In the last decade the performance of robots has increased enormously while at the same time their prices have been plummeting. A robot sold in 2002 would have cost less than a fifth of what a robot with the same performance would have cost in 1990. In the last few years the decrease in price of robots has, however, started to level off. Profitability studies have shown that it is not unusual for robots to have a pay -back period as short as 1-2 years.