Time To Augment Robotic Skills

While the other industries prepare themselves to reap the rich benefits that robotics brings, the robotics industry in itself is facing the challenge to find and hire the right talent. At present, the skill gap in the robotics industry is not merely hampering its own growth, but also of all the other industries which can be transformed by robotic deployment.

- Chetan Yadav

Circa 2009, the time when the global economy had not started showing any signs of recovery after the 'Great Economic Depression'. Even as most global businesses languished in distress, making capital expenditure a dream, there was a silver lining that did not capture anybody's attention. The world was gradually waking up to the power of automation across industries. An International Federation of Robotics study suggests that in such a bleak economic scenario, the global sales of robotics automation solutions had showed an upward trajectory in 2009, and, has since grown by a whopping 400%.

Robotics has redefined several industries such as manufacturing, ecommerce, logistics, retail, healthcare, and hospitality etc. to grow in scale, optimize costs, increase accuracy, and enhance the overall experience for the end user. For instance, only about 1,000 robot assisted surgeries were performed around the world in 2000. The number had dramatically gone up to about 5, 70,000 in 2014, and is well expected to have crossed the two million mark by 2015. High precision procedures during the surgery can be handled by robots (under human supervision) to increase the chances of success. The Henn-na Hotel in a Netherlands-themed amusement park in Nagasaki, Japan is definitely worth a visit since it is completely staffed by multilingual robots that can process language to understand the orders and requirements of its guests and take care of them.