Factory robots

By the end of 2025, the International Federation of Robotics counts about 5.1 million industrial robots working in factories, after a record year of more than 600,000 new installations. These are arms fixed beside a line. They weld, paint, pack, and move parts. They do not walk through a building looking for something to do.

The contribution is a repeated physical job done by a motor, a sensor, and a chip. The motor is the 1831 idea. The chip is the 1959 idea. The arm's body is steel, which is the iron line. Software tells it the path. Artificial intelligence is starting to help with vision, but most of these arms still run a programmed path.

IFR expects installations to keep rising through 2029 and the world stock to pass 6 million around 2028. That is more of the same machines. Their own report says a normal factory arm is still economically better than a humanoid for factory work.

The World Economic Forum's employer survey scores robots and autonomous systems as a net loss of about 5 million jobs worldwide by 2030. That is real and limited. It is not a plan to reduce the number of people.