Robots at Work — Robotics

TL;DR

Most robots still work in factories: 603,307 industrial robots were installed in 2025, 59% of them in China (IFR, as of October 2026).
Among professional service robots, logistics is the biggest market: warehouses use goods-to-person systems in which shelves or bins come to the picker.
Legged robots and drones inspect substations, platforms and power lines where walking rounds are slow or risky; milking robots and surgical robots are established in farming and healthcare.
Robot density — robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees — is 132 worldwide and 1,220 in Korea (2024 data).
Employers expect robots to change their businesses and to remove more jobs than they create, but those are projections; the skills to install, maintain and work safely beside robots are in demand.

Where robots work

The best numbers on robots come from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), which publishes its World Robotics report every autumn. The 2026 edition, released on 24 September 2026, covers 2025:

603,307 industrial robots were installed worldwide (+11%), a record; in total 5,079,078 were in operation. The IFR expects about 655,000 installations in 2026.
Almost 250,000 professional service robots were sold (+24%) — robots that work outside manufacturing, for businesses. Transport and logistics accounted for 117,500 of them, surgical robots for 8,400 (+57%).
Almost 34.2 million consumer robots were sold, such as robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers.

The example puts the industrial numbers in proportion:

# IFR World Robotics 2026 (released 24 September 2026), data for 2025.
installed_2025 = 603_307        # industrial robots installed worldwide
previous_record = 552_946       # installed in 2022
china = 354_226

by_industry = {
    "electronics": 142_235,
    "automotive": 138_429,
    "metal and machinery": 108_571,
}

print(f"China's share of installations: {china / installed_2025:.1%}")
print(f"Above the 2022 record by: {installed_2025 / previous_record - 1:.1%}")
for industry, units in by_industry.items():
    print(f"{industry:20} {units:8,}  {units / installed_2025:5.1%}")

China's share of installations: 58.7%
Above the 2022 record by: 9.1%
electronics           142,235  23.6%
automotive            138,429  22.9%
metal and machinery   108,571  18.0%

China installed more robots than the rest of the world together, and electronics was the largest buyer, just ahead of the car industry. Europe installed 73,054 robots (−14%), the Americas 57,044 and the United States 38,428 — more than Japan's 36,200. The kinds of robots behind these numbers are introduced on What Is Robotics?; how they are programmed and integrated on Industrial Robots and Cobots in Practice.

Warehouses

In a classic warehouse, order pickers walk or drive along shelves for most of their shift. Robots change that in two ways: mobile robots carry goods between places, and systems bring the goods to a fixed workstation.

Goods-to-person is a warehouse design in which shelves, bins or totes are brought by robots or automated storage to a fixed picking station, where a person (or a picking robot) takes the items for an order — instead of the person walking to the goods. The robots in such a system are usually mobile robots that drive under a shelf and lift it, or robots that run on a grid on top of stacked bins. The picker no longer walks, and the system decides which shelf comes next.

Amazon is the largest example. The company said in mid-2025 that it had deployed its one millionth robot, across more than 300 facilities, and that its DeepFleet foundation model, which coordinates the fleet's movements, improves the robots' travel time by 10%. Fleet coordination is a planning problem at a large scale: many robots on one grid must find paths without blocking each other (see Path Planning).

For people working beside them, warehouse robots bring the questions of Robot Safety and Standards: driverless trucks and mobile robots have their own safety standard, ISO 3691-4.

Inspection of the power grid

An inspection robot is a robot that carries sensors such as cameras, thermal cameras, microphones or gas detectors along a route to check equipment, so that people do not have to make every round in person — useful where sites are remote, large, dangerous or simply visited very often. Grid operators are an obvious user: a substation or an offshore platform needs regular checks of gauges, temperatures and noises, and walking rounds take time.

Legged robots can climb stairs and step over cables. TenneT, the Dutch and part-German transmission system operator, tested ANYbotics' four-legged ANYmal robot for one week in 2018 on an offshore converter platform in the North Sea, checking 16 inspection points (according to trade press quoting TenneT).
In a 2024 interview, TenneT said it was using a robot dog at its Wateringen substation, that drones inspect about 270 of its masts a year, and that a rollout to 350 locations was being considered.

A drone is an uncrewed aircraft, in robotics usually a small multirotor that flies a planned route on its own or under a remote pilot; for inspection it carries cameras or other sensors to places that are hard to reach, such as the top of a transmission tower. Flying drones for work is regulated by aviation law, which this page does not cover: check the rules that apply where you fly before planning a drone project.

For a network or OT team, an inspection robot is also a new device: it moves through a site full of operational technology, connects over a wireless network and sends images back. It belongs in the asset inventory and the security zones like any other OT asset (see IEC 62443).

Farms

A milking robot is an automated milking system in which a cow walks into a milking box when it chooses to, and a robot arm cleans the teats, attaches the milking cups and records how much milk each cow gives — so cows are milked on their own schedule instead of at fixed times by the farmer. A leading maker is Dutch: Lely, based in Maassluis, reported sales of €1,014 million for 2025 and launched two new milking robots, the Astronaut A5 Next and the Astronaut Max, on 24 June 2025.

Milking robots show what makes a robot work in practice: a narrow, repetitive task, an animal that comes to the robot rather than the other way around, sensors that check every step, and data that helps the farmer follow every cow.

Operating rooms

A surgical robot is a robotic system that holds and moves surgical instruments and a camera through small incisions, controlled by a surgeon at a console who sees an enlarged 3D image of the operating area. It does not operate on its own: it is a form of teleoperation.

Intuitive's da Vinci system is the best-known example. Its fifth generation, da Vinci 5, received FDA 510(k) clearance in the United States on 14 March 2024, and on 30 June 2026 Intuitive had 11,710 da Vinci systems installed worldwide. By the IFR's count, 8,400 surgical robots were sold in 2025 (+57%).

Robot density per country

Comparing installations between countries says little, because a large country with many factories installs more robots anyway. Robot density is the number of industrial robots in operation per 10,000 employees in manufacturing, a measure the IFR uses to compare how automated manufacturing is in different countries regardless of their size. The IFR's latest figures, released on 8 April 2026, are for 2024:

# Robot density: industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees.
# IFR, released 8 April 2026, data for 2024.
WORLD_AVERAGE = 132
density = {
    "Korea": 1220, "Singapore": 818, "Germany": 449,
    "Japan": 446, "United States": 307, "China": 166,
}

print(f"{'country':14}{'density':>8}{'x world':>9}{'employees per robot':>21}")
for country, robots in density.items():
    print(f"{country:14}{robots:8}{robots / WORLD_AVERAGE:9.1f}"
          f"{10_000 / robots:21.1f}")
print(f"{'world':14}{WORLD_AVERAGE:8}{1:9.1f}{10_000 / WORLD_AVERAGE:21.1f}")

country        density  x world  employees per robot
Korea             1220      9.2                  8.2
Singapore          818      6.2                 12.2
Germany            449      3.4                 22.3
Japan              446      3.4                 22.4
United States      307      2.3                 32.6
China              166      1.3                 60.2
world              132      1.0                 75.8

In Korea there is one industrial robot for every eight manufacturing employees; worldwide one for every 76. China installs the most robots but, with its very large manufacturing workforce, has a much lower density. The Netherlands is in the IFR's top 20, but the IFR's release gives no figure for it.

Jobs and skills

What robots mean for work is mostly a question about the future, and the best data on it are surveys. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 (January 2025) asked employers what they expect for 2025–2030. They expect robots and autonomous systems to transform 58% of their businesses, and in their answers robotics is the largest net displacer of jobs: a net decline of 5 million jobs. These are employers' projections, not measured outcomes, and they say nothing about which tasks within a job change.

What is visible today is the work around robots:

Operators load, start and monitor robot cells, clear faults and know when to call for help.
Technicians maintain motors, grippers, sensors and safety devices, and replace parts after a crash.
Integrators and programmers design cells, write and teach programs, and connect robots to PLCs and plant systems.
IT and OT staff handle the networks, accounts, backups and security of robot controllers, fleet managers and the cloud services behind them.

For all of them, safety knowledge comes first (see Robot Safety and Standards). Most robot training is offered per vendor; how that works, and what vendor-neutral options exist, is on Industrial Robots and Cobots in Practice. For a hands-on start at home, see Building Your First Robot; for planning a career and learning alongside work, see Building Your Career in IT and Learning Continuously.