INDUSTRY News
Update of the smart conveyance market
Research by market intelligence specialist Interact Analysis shows that the market for smart conveyance technology (SCT) enjoyed strong growth in 2022 and its outlook remains much more positive than the underlying growth anticipated for manufacturing and machinery production. Smart conveyance technology vendors are seeing increasing adoption rates from new industries and applications as traditional conveyor systems are being replaced. The linear smart conveyance technology market experienced 31.7% growth in 2022 – up from 27% in 2021. However, over the next two years this growth is expected to drop to around 23.6%, as the general outlook for manufacturing dips. From 2022 to 2027, the linear smart conveyance technology market is predicted to see a global CAGR of 26.3%, growing from $397m in 2022 to over $1.2bn in 2027. While the planar SCT market is much smaller than the linear SCT market, it is expected to be worth $100m by 2027. Most customers currently using planar SCT technology are doing so in trial projects, with the market at present being valued at $18.2m. This segment of the SCT market will grow at a forecast CAGR of 41.2% between 2022 and 2027. Along labour shortages and global economic uncertainty, supply chain disruptions continue to impact the SCT market. Many vendors have looked to new suppliers for their components and the cost of raw materials continues to put added pressure, with rising infl ation further exacerbating the problem, leading to vendors increasing their prices. Lead times have been slow but are expected to improve and prices to fall in the future, as the SCT market becomes increasingly competitive.
ABB COLUMN
A HEALTHY FUTURE FOR ROBOTIC AUTOMATION
Although robotic surgeons are often thought of as a prospect for the future, robotic technologies have been in used in surgery for many years. In fact, St Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital has been using the DaVinci surgical system for some two decades, clocking over 10,000 procedures. With arms operated by humans, Da Vinci has been proven to deliver quicker and better outcomes for patients.
We may have to wait a while before robots are capable of conducting fully autonomous surgery on patients, but automation is already bringing great benefits to the healthcare industry. Since the COVID pandemic, testing laboratories looked to automated solutions as a way of testing samples and developing vaccines at an accelerated rate whilst reducing the risk of sickness to staff caused by the potential exposure to the virus. An example is the Rapid Automated Volume Enhancer (RAVE) developed for Singapore. The system uses ABB IRB 910 SCARA robots to automate several laborious tasks involved in sample processing. Using automation enables up to 2,000 samples to be prepared in a single day, around four times faster than manually-based routines. Removing the strain and fatigue that human technicians would experience, the robots also ensures error-free testing. Equally, robots are working directly alongside human medical staff and
lab workers in the form of collaborative robots, or cobots. At the Texas Medical Center in Houston, US, ABB has demonstrated several robot technologies, including the dual-arm YuMi mounted on a mobile platform. Autonomously sensing and navigating its way around human co-workers, the mobile YuMi can be used to prepare medicines, load and unload centrifuges, and sort test tubes. The ability of cobots to work alongside people is one of the factors
encouraging their greater take up in healthcare applications. A recent ABB survey of healthcare and pharma companies, ‘Robots that can collaborate with humans’, found that some 37% of respondents cite this as a major reason to adopt the technology, whereas 82% intend to invest in robots in the next three years. There is no doubt that now is the time to invest and grow with robots.
To discover what robotic automation can do for you, visit:
https://campaign.abb.com/Grow_with_Robots_microsite_ home.
Nigel Platt, LBL Manager, UK and Ireland, ABB Robotics
automationmagazine.co.uk
Automation | November 2023
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