Smart Machines : The German Touch

One of the most exciting branches of Germany’s mechanical engineering industry is robotics and automation. Encompassing a broad range of sophisticated products, this industrial sub-sector represents the cutting edge of technological development. German firms working in this field have been utilizing the country’s advanced research and development resources to come up with new applications for markets clear across the economic spectrum, from the automotive sector to medicine.

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The past two years have brought significant gains for German robotics and automation companies. From 2005 to 2006, sales rose 6 percent to €7.3 billion. That accounts for about 4.5 percent of totalsales volume in the German mechanical engineering industry as a whole. For 2007, the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) estimated that sales of German-made robotics and automation technology would reach €7.9 billion, an increase of 8 percent.
Over 60 percent of sales in this sub-sector are generated by handling and assembly products, followed by robots (23 percent) and industrial imaging – or “machine vision” – technology (15 percent). The largest export markets for German handling and assembly equipment are the United States, France, Italy, and China.
Among the most prominent trends in the German robotics and automation sector is the broadening of the customer base beyond the automotive industry. The VDMA cited this development as the chief factor responsible for sales growth in 2006 within the German robotics sector.
Particularly noteworthy was the increased demand for robots from the metalworking, furniture, and plastics industries. Some 48 percent of all sales by German robot suppliers in 2006 went to buyers from outside the automotive sector.
The fastest growing product segment for German robotics and automation companies in 2006 was machine vision technology. This small but important segment recorded a 9 percent sales increase across the board. Most of that growth was generated by a surge in demand for “configurable” systems, which can be adapted to support changing production needs. Sales of such systems – which integrate cameras, computers, and software – jumped a full 45 percent.
Aside from its role as a supplier of topnotch robotics and automation products to the world, Germany itself also represents a huge market for such products. The country’s share of all industrial robots installed in Europe in 2006 amounted to 36 percent. Altogether, nearly 130,000 industrial robots are currently operating in Germany, more than in any other country except Japan.
Looking to the future, German engineers and researchers are actively shaping the industry’s development through a series of collaborative ventures with international partners. One of these promising projects was unveiled last October at the newly founded Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab) at the University of Bielefeld. In cooperation with the Japanese technology company Honda, CoR-Lab has become Europe‘s first university-based institution to utilize Honda’s state-of-the-art ASIMO humanoid robot as a research platform. The institute is focusing its research on artificial perception and neurological motion control systems.
The CoR-Lab institute and dozens of others like it around Germany are being supported with generous public funding. Federal and state authorities in Germany are pouring millions of euros into research and development aimed at spawning viable industrial ventures.