Chapter 19 - The Industry, Its Past and Its Future

Abstract

There are several broad market segments for autonomous mobile robots. Each of these has been explored by numerous companies and with numerous products. These segments include hobby, research, and gadget robots; home robots; agricultural robots; and service robots. There are different markets for autonomous robots and yet there is no evidence of clear commercial success. Some of the most common reasons are technology limitations; inflated claims and unrealistic customer expectations; lack of resources; and acceptance, fear, and prejudice. The most important obstacle to the success of robots is public acceptance—more precisely customer acceptance. While people are fascinated by robots, they are also threatened by them. Enabling technologies ranging from sensors to radio communications and navigation aids are all accelerating logarithmically. The ubiquitous acceptance of wireless local access network systems, the plunging costs of video cameras and processors, the availability of affordable laser navigation systems, and the ever-increasing accuracy and dropping cost of global positioning system navigation receivers all combine to make autonomous robots potentially cheaper and ever more capable.