Kuka is planning to expand their markets and go for manufacturing robotics and automation solutions for consumer market.
Till Reuters, CEO of KUKA, announced this direction to have been chosen by Midea, the Chinese home appliances manufacturer, the new owners the Kuka company.
When one thinks of this, the safety issue emerges first. The safe interaction of humans and robots is being widely promoted, even in the movies. Here comes to mind the episode from the “Iron Man” Tony Stark’s cyber-laboratory, when a robotic arm was now and then meddling in the plot with some ill-suited command and made everybody roll in the aisles.
The KUKA company with its iiwa model, the first line of cobots, has uncompromisingly proved robots’ being safe for people. Now, they work not only on factories, but also in the “smart factory” for example, at Hannover Messe 2017. This model is obviously the one to first appear in the consumer market, with the task to assist you in housework.
The Midea company is considering to adopt the KUKA expertise especially for assisting the elderly. Many countries are facing the issue of aging of population, assisting the elderly, and see robots as an attractive solution.
The number of produced robots is growing every year. According to the forecast, by the year 2025, the cost of an industrial robot can rise up to 33.8 billion dollars, and the estimated cost of a cobot will be at the level of 11 billion dollars.
The smart market grows together with the market of cobots. In 2016, about 80 million smartphones were delivered worldwide. And a recent study showed that the generation of Millennials and Baby Boomers will form the basis for the built-in intelligent technologies.