THERE ARE NOW some 120,000 warehouses globally, and another 50,000 are likely to be added before 2025. Over the next few years, more robots will be deployed into these warehouses—the logistics market—than in all other application categories combined, including farming, medicine, and home use. Just as the 1960s saw the mechanization of industry, with an accompanying boom in productivity and prosperity, the 2020s will be the dawn of the robotification of services.
BOX BOTS
INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS CAME into use in 1961 when General Motors (G.M.) installed a simple robotic arm on its New Jersey production line. The machine had been invented by Unimation, a company founded by the father of robotics, Joseph Engelberger—a self-professed Isaac Asimov enthusiast. By 1969, G.M. rebuilt its Lordstown, Ohio, factory with an array of Unimates to perform welds, and the facility soon achieved a twofold leap over its former production rate, making it the most productive factory in the world. (That same factory would be sold in 2020 to startup Lordstown Motors, with plans to make electric trucks.) Automobile manufacturers everywhere were among the first and fastest to embrace industrial robots.
The International Federation of Robotics, founded in 1987, issues an annual robot census. When 2020 began, it found nearly 400 million industrial robots at work in factories around the world, twice the number from five years earlier. But for the first time, over half of all robot purchases globally were in services, not industrial applications. And while growth in the latter is expected to continue, installations of service bots are expected to rise more than 200 percent in just a couple of years.
This story is from the April 2022 edition of Reason magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2022 edition of Reason magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Libertarianism From the Ground Up
ARGUMENTS FOR LIBERTARIANISM typically take two forms. Some libertarians base their creed on natural rights-the idea that each individual has an inborn right to self-ownership, or freedom from aggression, or whatever-and proceed to argue that only a libertarian political regime is compatible with those rights.
Lawlessness and Liberalism
THE UNITED STATES is notorious both for mass incarceration and for militarized police forces.
Politics Without Journalism
THE 2024 CAMPAIGN WAS A WATERSHED MOMENT FOR THE WAY WE PROCESS PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
EVERY BODY HATES PRICES
BUT THEY HELP US DECIDE BETWEEN BOURBON AND BACONATORS.
The Great American City Upon a Hill Is Always Under Construction
AMERICA'S UTOPIAN DREAMS LEAD TO URBAN EXPERIMENTATION.
Amanda Knox Tells Her Own Story
\"OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM RELIES UPON OUR OWN IGNORANCE AND THE FACT THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHAT OUR RIGHTS ARE.\"
Trade Policy Amnesia
WHILE HE WAS interviewing for the job, President Joe Biden demonstrated an acute awareness of how tariffs work. It's worrisome that he seems to have forgotten that or, worse, chosen to ignore it-since he's been president.
Civil Liberties Lost Under COVID
WHEN JOE BIDEN was sworn in as president in January 2021, he had good reason to be optimistic about the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bye, Joe
AMERICA'S 46th president is headed out the door. After a single term marked by ambitious plans but modest follow-through, Joe Biden is wrapping up his time in office and somewhat reluctantly shuffling off into the sunset.
Q&A Mark Calabria
IF YOU HAVE a mortgage on your home, the odds are that it's backed by one of two congressionally chartered, government-sponsored enterprises (GSES), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
