Collaborative Robots: Hype or Technology of the Future? Findings from an Empirical Market Analysis

Collaborative robots (so-called cobots) enable human-robot collaboration without security fences and are regarded as a promising future technology for manufacturing companies. However, actual market penetration has fallen behind estimations in recent years. A lack of market transparency makes it difficult to identify current barriers, development trends and the potential of cobots in practice. Will this technology become a game-changer or turn out to be a mere hype topic without significant impact on production practice? In this article, we present findings from an empirical market analysis based on secondary data and qualitative interviews with German market experts from business and academia.