Vision for Service Robots
Current and Emerging Technologies, Applications, and Markets
Service robots present a billion dollar opportunity for suppliers of vision components.
Many predictions have been made about the increasing intersection of human needs and robot capabilities, whether to fight terrorism or aid aging populations. Service robots will play a vital role in such applications and vision components and systems will help drive this growth. In this report, Adil Shafi presents a comprehensive review of the technologies, markets, and opportunities for suppliers of vision components and systems. Based on his analysis, Shafi estimates a near-term market for vision components of over a billion dollars.
Service robots are growing in both numbers and in the applications they serve, which range from bomb disposal, agriculture, and warehouse logistics, to teaching children and assisting the elderly. These non-industrial robots are intelligent automation products that are having a profound impact on every aspect of humanity. Machine vision and image processing products and technologies play essential roles for these robots, enabling them to image, store, and interpret data about the world around them, and perform actions based on this data.
This market report analyzes the broad and dynamic field of service robots in terms of the vision components and systems that they employ. These are classified in a manner that enables engineering and business development managers to understand the numerous technology trends, potential applications, and market opportunities that such systems present to vision suppliers and to developers of service robots.
Researched and written by Adil Shafi, president of Advenovation and well-known authority on vision-guided robotics, this comprehensive report shows how the market for vision components and systems in service robots will reach over a billion dollars worldwide within the next decade. Highlighting both the diversity of service robot markets and their differing characteristics, this report shows suppliers of vision components and systems how to take advantages of these new opportunities and the potential volume of sales that can be expected in each market segment.
In the report, service robots are classified in terms of their location, whether deployed in space, land, or water. By further refining the classifications, opportunities for such systems in remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and aircraft are explored. In marine applications, opportunities for vision in robots performing scientific research or oil drilling are reported. In each application segment, the opportunity for individual vision components such as cameras, lighting, optics, boards, software, and automation hardware, and for 3-D or infrared imaging subsystems are identified.
Land-based service robots constitute the largest variety and number of opportunities for suppliers of vision components. These include security, logistics, demolition, milking, physical therapy, surgery, home appliances, office communications, and transportation applications.
In land-based defense and security applications, for example, mobile robots with cameras will number in the thousands. Highlighting this opportunities, the report shows how robots are used for surveillance and persistent stare applications, including removing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), firefighting, and police patrols, and notes recent technical developments, barriers to deployment, and crucial innovations and market opportunities. Based on just these applications, the report estimates a near-term market for vision components of $135 million in the alone.
In addition to far-ranging online research, leaders in robotics at , Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT were interviewed, along with researchers from Fraunhofer IPA, NIST, and the of the US Department of Transportation. Companies such as Willow Garage, iRobot, Intuitive Surgical, Hoaloha Robotics, RoadNarrows Robotics, Sony, Kuka, and Qinetiq also provided important technical information and market data.
