The global humanoid robotics market is on a rapid growth trajectory, according to Omdia's latest report, Robotics Hardware Market Forecast 2021-30. The report predicts that global shipments of humanoid robots will cross the 10,000-unit mark by 2027, and that number will surge to 38,000 units by 2030, marking a staggering 83 percent compound annual growth rate for the market between 2024 and 2030.
Behind this remarkable growth is the rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology and its intensive application in the field of humanoid robotics. In particular, in recent years, the extensive investment and exploration in the field of humanoid robots by tech giants represented by Boston Dynamics has greatly boosted the commercialization of bipedal anthropomorphic morphology specifications. With the continuous breakthrough and optimization of core technologies such as servo motors, harmonic drives and sensors, the development cost of humanoid robots has been reduced to the optimal level, paving the way for mass production.
At the same time, NVIDIA, a leader in the AI chip market, has keenly captured the huge potential of the humanoid robot market and is actively promoting AI solutions within its compute-intensive devices. This initiative not only promotes the integration of AI software for humanoid robots in motion control, navigation and computer vision, but also lays a solid foundation for the widespread application of humanoid robots in future robotic automation.
At present, the initial application scenarios of humanoid robots have been mainly focused on the automotive manufacturing field, and leading companies such as Tesla and Azera have taken the lead in adopting humanoid robots to improve production efficiency. However, its potential goes far beyond that. Humanoid robots are showing promise in a wide range of sectors, including general manufacturing, logistics, retail, food and beverage, customer service and healthcare. Numerous startups such as Agility Robotics, Daxu, Xiaomi, Figure, Fourier, Ubiquiti, and Yushu have also joined this track to drive innovation and development of humanoid robotics.
Despite the optimistic outlook, humanoid robotics is still in its infancy and faces many challenges in mass production and wide-scale deployment. Most robots are still in the experimental or proof-of-concept stage, and it will take time before they are fully commercialized. However, as natural language interaction, sensor fusion, navigation algorithms and predictive and generative AI technologies continue to advance, humanoid robots will become safer, smarter and easier to operate, revolutionizing the field of robotic automation.
Omdia chief analyst Su Lianjie pointed out that the active exploration of Chinese companies such as Daxu in the field of humanoid robots will inject new vitality and inspiration into the industry. He also emphasized that the continued growth in demand for robotic automation will bring strong impetus to the entire robotics market, and humanoid robots, as an important part of it, its development prospects are particularly worthy of expectation.