Numbers that speak for themselves

IFR data published in June 2026 shows that the U.S. industrial robot market returned to double-digit growth after two years of stagnation. The automotive industry remains the largest customer with 13,500 installations, but the real story is happening elsewhere.

The food sector, metalworking industry, and electrical engineering — each of these industries installed approximately 3,000 robots in 2025. In the food sector, this represents a 30% year-on-year jump, a pace unprecedented in history. "While automotive achieved its third best result in seven years, the data clearly shows growing demand for flexible automation in the food industry," commented Takayuki Ito, then-president of the IFR.

For comparison: China remains the global leader, with 295,000 industrial robots installed in 2024 — that is 54% of all installations worldwide. The U.S., while ranking 8th in robot density (307 robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees), is far behind leaders such as South Korea (1,220), Germany (449), or Japan (446), but the trend is clearly upward.

AI as the new engine of robotics

What is behind this acceleration? The key word is artificial intelligence. While traditional industrial robots had to be expensively programmed for each individual operation separately, the new generation of AI-equipped robots can do far more.

Computer vision enables robots to recognize objects of various shapes, sizes, and orientations — exactly what a packaging line handling different products needs. Machine learning gives robots the ability to improve their manipulation of objects based on experience, much like a human learns. And generative AI — the same technology behind ChatGPT — now helps program robots using natural language. Instead of writing hundreds of lines of code, you can simply say: "Grab this part and place it in the box in the upper right corner."

At Automate 2026 in Chicago, which this year attracted a record more than 50,000 attendees and 1,230 exhibitors, companies like Kawasaki Robotics, Doosan Robotics, and Intrinsic (a subsidiary of Google) demonstrated robots that adapt in real time. It's a fundamental shift from "blind" machines that repeat programmed movements to "physical AI" that truly perceives its surroundings.

Why the food industry in particular?

While welding car bodies is highly standardized — the same part, the same movement, over and over — packaging food is notoriously unpredictable. Every chicken has a different shape, every apple a different size, every baguette a different curve. This is precisely where AI deploys its most powerful weapons.

Companies like ABB Robotics have this year introduced autonomous forklifts with visual SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) that navigate without floor tape or magnetic markers. Doosan Robotics launched an AI palletizing solution for manufacturing with frequent product changeovers — ideal for food processing operations where production batches change rapidly.

Flexiv, a manufacturer of "adaptive robots" with tactile feedback, even demonstrated at Automate 2026 a robot that, thanks to force sensors and AI, can handle fragile food items without damaging them. This is a capability that, just a few years ago, was reserved exclusively for human hands.

What this means for Europe and the Czech Republic

The European robotics market is also growing, albeit more slowly than the U.S. Germany, with a robot density of 449 units per 10,000 employees, ranks among the world leaders and drives automation across Europe. For Czech manufacturers and food companies, it means one thing: competition is automating, and those who stand still will fall behind.

In the Czech Republic, industrial robots can already be found primarily in the automotive industry — Škoda Auto is among the most automated factories in the region. But the food sector in particular, where Czech companies like Agrofert, Madeta, or Penam employ tens of thousands of people, is a sector with enormous untapped potential. The labor shortage that has plagued Czech industry for years is pushing wages up, making automation an economic necessity, not just a technological novelty.

The good news is that modern AI robots no longer require an army of specialized programmers. Companies like ABB, KUKA, or Fanuc now offer intuitive interfaces where an operator "teaches" the robot a new task simply by guiding its arm. The cost of entry into robotics is thus falling and becoming more accessible even for medium-sized enterprises.

China is pushing hard — and this time it's not just about quantity

While the U.S. and Europe are figuring out how to accelerate robotics, China has long been running at full throttle. With 295,000 installations in 2024, it controls more than half of the global market. Moreover, its new five-year plan (2026–2030) for the first time places robotics and AI at the center of the national industrial strategy. The goal is clear: to connect AI research with physical applications so that robots become the main engine of economic growth.

Chinese company AgiBot, a leader in humanoid robots, announced in June 2026 that its 15,000th robot had rolled off the production line — and it is simultaneously expanding into Europe, where at VivaTech in Paris it demonstrated dancing humanoids and openly discusses a Robot-as-a-Service model. This is an approach where a company doesn't buy the robot but rents it as a service — similar to how cloud software is paid for today.

The U.S. is building a national strategy

Americans are realizing that they lag behind not only China but also Korea and Germany in robot adoption. The A3 Association (Association for Advancing Automation) therefore officially presented "A Vision for a National Robotics Strategy" this year and submitted it to lawmakers. It proposes the creation of a Federal Robotics Office, a national commission for policy coordination, tax incentives for automation, and a federal mandate to purchase domestic robotics technology.

"The United States is back on a growth trajectory," summarized Takayuki Ito of the IFR. And the federation's new president, Jane Heffner of Teradyne Robotics, added: "The global robotics industry is at an important inflection point, driven by rapid advances in artificial intelligence and automation."

Obstacles and challenges

Not everything is rosy, however. A study by QNX revealed that 91% of robotics developers rely on operating systems not built for robotics. In other words — software is holding the industry back more than hardware. Safety certifications, interoperability between different manufacturers, and a shortage of qualified workforce remain significant barriers.

Another challenge is energy intensity. Industrial automation requires enormous amounts of electricity, and in the context of rising energy prices in Europe, this could be a limiting factor. Nevertheless, the IFR expects resilient long-term growth — primarily due to reshoring of manufacturing back to domestic economies and the persistent labor shortage.