By now, we’re all be familiar with industrial robotics—but you might not have heard of telerobotics.
Telerobotics is all about the control of semi-autonomous robots from a distance, hence the prefix “tele-,” meaning “to or at a distance.”
Telerobotics and teleoperation are playing an increasingly meaningful role in industrial automation and the rapidly evolving industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) arena, according to industry researchers at Mind Commerce Publishing.
It’s also worth noting that there are various other supporting technologies that promise to accelerate the adoption of industrial robotics and improve process controlling and monitoring in IIoT environments. These technologies include hardware, such as sensors, activators and dynamic control interfaces such as exoskeleton gloves, as well as software, such as Big Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
So far, the benefits of industrial automation are most tangible in the manufacturing industry, but industries including healthcare, agriculture and maybe one day community businesses will soon benefit from robotics with IIoT-inspired systems too.
Mind Commerce recently released a report detailing how telerobotics systems could transform the business focus in manufacturing and other industries towards an “outcome-based economy.”
The company describes this concept as an emerging model in which businesses compete based on their ability to deliver measurable results to customers. “Such outcomes may range from guaranteed machine uptimes on factory floors to actual amounts of energy savings in commercial buildings to guaranteed crop yields from a specific parcel of farmland,” Mind Commerce stated.
More specifically, the company’s research evaluates the emerging role of teleoperation and telerobotics in the era of Industry 4.0 and the technology’s impact on different industry verticals and technology sectors, while also providing a market forecast for IIoT teleoperation and telerobotics systems, services, and solutions for the period of 2016–2021.
The report contains information to appeal to various audiences, including:
- Manufacturing companies
- Telecom service providers
- ICT infrastructure suppliers
- Industrial robotics companies
- Semiconductor manufacturers
- Embedded systems companies
- Systems integration companies
- Wireless device manufacturers
- Systems integration companies
- Sensors and actuators suppliers
- R&D labs and research organizations
- Connected/Smart industry ecosystem
Some of the report’s key findings include:
- Agile robotics represents a significant component of the market by 2021
- Fog Computing facilitates industrial automation as intelligence move to the edge
- Teleoperation and Telerobotics Solution in Metals and Mining to reach $900M by 2021
- IIoT is expected to leverage machine learning and Big Data technology to optimize robotics
- Overall robotics market for IIoT will obtain a $45.73-billion market size by 2021 with a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60 percent