International Federation of Robotics

So, yeah, so we obviously report back through the British Automation Robotics Association.

But the numbers are collated by the International Federation of Robotics globally.

they get the numbers directly from the OEM manufacturers.

Nearly all of them report their numbers and then we have to try and collate national figures that are fed back to IFR with those numbers that are fed to them by the OEMs and they're collated and then fed back to the whole sort of industrial manufacturers with where those robots have gone and what sort of market share you hold.

Now let's bring robotics into this, because robotics gives us the cleanest antidote to AI hype.

Today's AI weekly robotics news roundup for October second cited the International Federation of Robotics saying, only about seven thousand humanoid robots were sold globally in twenty twenty-five, and that most were bought for AI data rather than productive work.

That is a crucial distinction.

A robot sold for data collection is not the same as a robot sold because it replaces labor, raises factory throughput, or reduces injury claims.

The IFR just reported six hundred and three thousand industrial robot installs across the globe.

Amazon has over a million robots already.

Amazon is now very much realizing the only way that they can keep their momentum up is not buying robots, it's building them.

Five million industrial robots are now working in factories worldwide.

That's the headline from the new IFR World Robotics report.

But here's the number underneath it.

One country installed fifty-nine percent of all those industrial robots deployed last year.

So even though the United States is in second place, they are in a very distant second place.

Um, the market itself depends on, I guess, what we would count.

And so based on the numbers that I was sort of finding, uh, and trying to place it again somewhere, it was like approximately, right, approximately, so this is from that IFR, um, document, so you could probably get some variation views, uh, of September.

The annual glo-global robotics turnover is approximately fifty billion bucks USD.

Um, so that's robot systems, that's software, that's peripheral stuff, a few other things.

Again, numbers smaller.

Uh, there was bold sort of call-out that there was about two hundred and fifty thousand, uh, new professional service robots.

Now, that's including mobile robots based on that I- that IFR document.

Um, forty-seven percent, uh, being in the transportation space.

There's 5 million industrial robots already installed.

And from what I've heard, the IFR ranks agentic AI as the top robotics trend.

And so given this giant labor shortage and the fact that our population is growing older and older, this really forces the adoption of more intelligent solutions.

The next phase, as I see it, is that robotics stops being one-off integration projects and very rigid solutions that are hard to change, but they become basically enterprise infrastructure where with tools like Embody, an operator can just onboard new skills and they can share skills across different robots and they can make this entire process repeatable and scalable where they previously couldn't.

According to the World Robotics 2026 report, there were 354,000 industrial robots in China last year, up 20% from 2024.

International Federation of Robotics President Jane Hefner says the success of China in modernizing its industrial system is based on its national robotics strategy initiated 10 years ago.

Hefner added that an updated strategy under China's 15th five-year plan aims to focus artificial intelligence research on physical applications with robots serving as an important driver of economic growth.

According to the Federation, Chinese brands have installed more than half of the industrial robots in the country since 2024.

First up, we take a look at the business of humanoid robots, and that's because about seven thousand humanoid robots were sold worldwide last year for industrial and professional service use.

Now, this is according to figures compiled by the International Federation of Robotics.

This is a relatively small number contrasting with forecasts for a boom in the coming years, particularly in China, which is the world's largest market for industrial robots.

In August, China even showcased a humanoid running and boxing at its robot games.