Collaborative robot sales poised for growth

Collaborative robot sales are set to see a massive jump in China as more industrial manufacturers deploy them to assist their human work force, a new industry report said.

The total size of the market in China will exceed 1.3 billion yuan ($196 million) by 2020, according to the Blue Paper of the Cobots Industry for 2017. It forecast that sales of collaborative robots, or cobots, will swell more than four times in four years to 12,000 units in China by 2020, with small and medium-sized enterprises driving the growth.

As many as 2,300 cobots were sold in China last year, up 109.09 percent year-on-year, and the market size rose 83.89 percent to 360 million yuan, the report added.