International | 11:10 AM
The development of humanoid robots is moving more mainstream, yet the household deployment could be 20-years away
- Mapping a US$25trn robotics future
- Ai moves from the digital to physical world but questions rise on safety, cost & efficacy
- Industrial humanoid trials are being rolled out in real world examples
- China accelerates deployment, with the US and Europe seeking to catch up
- Are we witnessing the next industrial revolution or inflating the next great bubble?
By Danielle Ecuyer
A total addressable market in the trillions spurs innovation
Shush, are you listening?
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
That statement is from John Dewey, a major American philosopher, psychologist, and education reformer who lived from 1859 to 1952.
Can you imagine a world re-imagined with humanoid robots fulfilling daily household tasks, with adjacent robotic capacity that transcends across most industries and countries?
Major US investment banks are at the forefront of research deep dives on what they believe is the start of such enormous change that history books will be written about this period.
At the core is artificial intelligence and the ability for the technology to transcend from the digital to the physical world. Think autonomous driverless vehicles, drones and human-like robots, i.e. humanoids.
Morgan Stanley initiated the Global Robotic Model (GROM) that creates bottom-up models across every industry, region and sector to illustrate how the global robotics market might evolve and grow by 2050.
Applying current global statistics, Morgan Stanley highlights the global labour force stands at 4 billion people. Assuming a US$10k per person annual wage, this equates to a US$40trn value or just over one-third of global GDP.
The broker estimates the AI robotics market to generate annual hardware product revenue of US$25trn by 2050 with recurring service revenue streams potentially double that amount.
To achieve such scale, the AI compute market is expected to grow 40,000 times, with the robotic bearings market 200 times, and batteries to grow 1,450 times, to name just a few examples.
RBC Capital is no less bullish, estimating the humanoid robot market at US$9trn by 2050 with software offering a further circa US$3trn in total addressable market.
Humanoid robots are expected to have a hybrid pricing model of hardware and software, think an electric vehicle with attached software-as-a-service model or an iPhone with Apple’s subscription service offerings.
Citi proposes AI-robots and humanoids will be moving all around us and there will likely be 1.3bn AI-robots by 2035 and 4bn by 2050.
The humanoid robot segment could evolve from work in industrial contexts like manufacturing and warehouses and then move to households with primary goals to achieve cleaning and caring.
Like RBC Capital, Citi believes this sector will take longer to evolve and build given the complexities of working in households and the tasks involved, but nevertheless sees a US$7trn humanoid market by 2050.
Franklin Templeton proposes The Fourth Industrial Revolution will see AI enhance more physical products, with opportunities in space, autonomous vehicles, robots and clean energy.
The latter estimates the size of the robotics market will grow to US$14trn by 2035 from US$26bn currently.
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