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Home > USA > Focus On
Robots that speak Italian
Rome - (IGN) - With the development of new technologies, especially digital, it was inevitable that the Italian machine tool and production systems industry, which has been among the world leaders for decades, would begin to assume an increasingly important role on world markets in the robotics field as well. And today, the Italian robotics sector (www.ucimu.it) is second in the world for value of production and number of devices produced. In some sectors, it is in first place, even ahead of Japan, the historic leader in this very special niche in the great world of instrumental goods. But there's more. Not only is Italy a great manufacturer of this type of machine, it is also a great market, to the extent that it occupies a relative second, and absolute fourth, place in the world ranking of countries that have invested in industrial automation equipment. If Japan currently has about 350,000 robots installed and Germany and the United States about 110,000, Italy has no less than 70,000. And if you calculate the number of robots for every 10,000 workers employed in manufacturing, Italy jumps to second place, with 100 machines for every 10,000 workers, after Germany, which has 130.
In short, a strong internal market has given the industry the energy its needs to successfully attack foreign markets. These businesses put down roots mostly in the Eighties, even in sectors other than automotive. It was, in fact, the auto industry that has driven the market since the Seventies, with the development of automatic painting and welding machinery. These first experiences gave rise to Comau, a Fiat Group company, that, today, is the world's largest manufacturer of automotive welding robots and among the first in the world in collateral sectors, such as handling, milling, drilling and painting. But it is precisely because Italy has a strong instrumental goods and machinery industry that the trend of developing automated equipment was able to put down roots in other sectors, in which Italian industry has been the absolute leader for decades. This is the case of robots for working marble, robotized systems for loading finished goods, robots for loading and cutting metals and machinery for moulding and assembling plastic parts. But, in the face of possible growth of applications for automation even beyond industry, we are seeing the first generations of service robots, destined to tackle jobs that are too risky or, at least, not very comfortable for people. These range from robots to sweep for anti-personnel and underwater mines, machines for aerospace applications, and robots for health and even surgical uses.
These are the first steps in a journey that Italian industry has embarked on with great determination, supported by a structured system of over 300 businesses, with about 10,000 employees and total sales in 2004 that reached almost 400 million Euro. Exports are constantly growing and accounted for almost a third of sales, for a total of almost 1,500 machines sold throughout the world in 2004. And the forecasts for coming years are for constant growth, even beyond the classic sector of automotive industry machines.
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