Juniper Research : Robots to Reside in more than 1 in 10 American Households by 2020

Dec 15, 2015 -

New data from Juniper Research has forecast that over 1 in 10 American households will own a consumer robot by the end of the decade, up from under 1 in 25 this year. At this early stage in the market, shipments are expected to be dominated by so-called ‘task’ oriented robots assigned to take over household chores, such as lawn mowing or vacuum cleaning.

Devices such as iRobot’s Roomba and Droplet Robotics’ Sprinkler offer tremendous ‘fire and forget’ type convenience for consumers, and despite obvious design compromises, are likely to usher in a new era of housekeeping.

The new research, Worldwide Consumer Robotics: Markets & Strategies 2015-2020, found that the performance of more complex robots, such as SoftBank’s Pepper, while improving, are heavily limited by present-day technology. Thus, in order to meet consumer expectations, smarter, more contextually aware robots are required.

Achieving a leap forward in AI (artificial intelligence) will demand not only more computing power, but also much greater efficiency if processing is to be offloaded from the cloud. Therefore, new approaches in chip design, such as IBM’s TrueNorth, are likely to become important in the medium-term.

Comments