Service robots will be a growth sector over the next decade, according to a new report, Service Robots 2022-2032, from technology market intelligence provider IDTechEx.

Some applications have been accelerated by the pandemic, which has forced some industries to consider new ways of providing essential services, it notes.

Unlike industrial robots, service robots are primarily designed to support people in their daily lives. As such, the sector covers a huge range of different applications.

These include logistics and delivery robots, social robots, automated or autonomous cleaning/disinfection devices, agricultural robots, kitchen and restaurant robots, and underwater robots (unmanned underwater vehicles for servicing pipelines and cables, for example).

Automation in the warehousing and logistics chain is a particularly fast-growing market, with a predicted compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21 percent over the next decade.

A key subset of this is mobile robots, including robotic carts/vehicles, on-road autonomous trucks, and drones.

The report notes, “Thanks to the relatively low technical complexity and massive demand market, logistics and delivery robots have a promising future.”

According to IDTechEx, service robotics’ second-largest application is cleaning and disinfection robots, either for physical cleaning (using brushes) or non-physical work (using sprays and/or UV lights).

“Driven by COVID, cleaning robots have gained lots of momentum and funding (especially for start-ups) during the past two years, particularly in their professional applications. IDTechEx expects to see a fast growth of professional cleaning robots in the upcoming decade.”

Meanwhile, social robots tend to be high-level artificial intelligence (AI) systems built into physical devices. Major applications include hospitality – for example, in hotels, restaurants, or airports – and medical treatment.

Social robots have demonstrated other promising uses in recent years among people who suffer from cognitive impairment, particularly those on the autism spectrum, notes the report.

Agricultural robots are a major emerging application of service robots. However, despite the seasonal labour challenges affecting the farming sector, robotics is a more challenging technology to develop for this application, as machines typically work with limited access to infrastructure, in difficult terrain and unpredictable weather.

Meanwhile, farming is a low-margin industry so the high upfront costs of agricultural robots could be a barrier to market uptake, says the report.

This is a challenge faced in other subsectors too. For example, restaurant and kitchen robots are another application that has gained attention over the past two years due to the impact of COVID.

However, they are typically expensive for an industry that has high competition and thin margins, which makes restaurant owners reluctant/unable to make significant upfront investments.