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Millennials are championing the virtual personal assistant movement.
The consumer robot market will see a year-on-year growth of 11.58 percent in 2022 and will accelerate to a compound annual growth rate of 12.19 percent during the forecast period.
It is in this context that house cleaning robots, which mainly comprise robotic vacuum cleaners, are the most dominant category in the robotics industry.
Today, we are fast approaching a world dominated by robots. Consumer robots and robotic devices are designed for everyday use, usually in a home or personal environment. In that context, the global consumer service robotics market recorded a year-on-year growth of 25 percent in 2021 and is estimated to grow at 27 percent over the next four years, according to the latest research from the Counterpoint IoT service.
Growth was fueled by changing consumer preference, technological advances, and the availability of a wide variety of affordable products.
Commenting on the market in general, research analyst Anshika Jain said:
“House cleaning robots, which primarily comprise robotic vacuum cleaners, are the most dominant category in the robotics industry, capturing more than two-thirds of the total consumer service robotics market. COVID-19 has positively impacted the robotic vacuum industry, resulting in increased demand from residential users.”
“With advances in AI, component and software prices are also coming down, making robots more affordable. There have also been improvements in technologies such as voice recognition and computer vision, which have helped drive growth. Furthermore, favorable government policies along with the required financial support are also helping to boost the segment,” added Jain.
On the other hand, according to the investigation report” Consumer Robotics Market by Application and Geography – Forecast and Analysis 2022-2026“, the market will experience a year-on-year growth of 11.58 percent in 2022 and will accelerate to a compound annual growth rate of 12.19 percent during the forecast period.
Summary of market segments
In this analysis, customer service robots have been divided into the segments of Household Cleaning, Personnel and Education, Hospitality, Logistics, Medical and Others.
- Domestic cleaning: composed mainly of robot vacuum cleaners, the Domestic Cleaning segment grew 22% in 2021 and contributed about 68% of total consumer service robot shipments. China was the largest market followed by Europe and North America. In this category, the leading players are iRobot , ecovacs , roborocks and all major OEMs in this category offer in-house hardware and software platforms where companies store all data in the cloud through partnerships with cloud companies.
- Personal and educational: this is a highly fragmented market comprising mainly educational-related and companion robots. captured around 31% stake of the total consumer service robotics market in 2021 and recorded year-on-year growth of 33%. Of all the categories, this segment had the Lowest ASP in 2021 with around $279. Major drivers in this category include elder care, combating social isolation, personal entertainment, and early childhood education.
- Hospitality: This category mainly includes reception assistants robotics that are used in the hotel services industry to help guests with basic tasks and robots related to disinfection . Although this segment captured less than 1% share of the total market in 2021, it was one of the fastest growing segments especially during COVID-19, as guests were looking for new experiences without contact and hotel chains were struggling to find labor due to shortages in the labor market. The hotel robot market is in its infancy and low penetration is attributed to high implementation and maintenance costs.
- Logistics: This segment covers delivery robots, used primarily for home delivery of food by supermarket chains, restaurants and hospitality companies. Shipments from delivery robots have remained low as they are expensive to implement and require massive initial investments. Starship Technologies, Nuro and Piaggio Fast Forward (a subsidiary of Piaggio) are the key players in this segment. These robots are mainly deployed in the North American market. The average price range for such robots is $2,500 to $10,000.
- Medical: this segment comprises surgical, exoskeleton and hospital delivery robots with a share of 61%, 23% and 11%, respectively, in the general medical category. In terms of regional share, North America is one of the largest markets, capturing almost half of the total segment.
It is also worth clarifying the effects of personal assistants on consumer perception.
Flex™ lconducted a consumer research project that explored the effect of artificial intelligence on consumer behavior, perception, and aspirations. The report looks at the general UK population, as well as attitudinal differences between genders and generations.
In this sense, it revealed thatMillennials are championing the virtual personal assistant movement. Almost half of this generation agrees that they are the best technological development to date. However, generation Z is not so interested.
The market for consumer service robots has enormous potential in the coming years due to the evolution of use cases. The robotic vacuum cleaner market is the most mature, but there is still significant growth potential.