A report released yesterday describes both the current position and the five-year outlook for the global industrial robotics market. While growth is expected to slow over the next five years, it's also expected to show up in the first place, putting the global industrial robotics market on a very exciting path for the future.

The report focused on the market roadmap across five geographical regions: the Americas, Europe, Japan, APAC and the rest of the world. It focused on the four major market sectors of industrial robotics as well: products, applications, functions and geography.

In these sectors are a variety of subsectors; products, for example, are divided into several different individual classes of robotics, like articulated robots, cartesian robots and cylindrical robots.

As for the market itself, in recent months, it has not only fully recovered from recession conditions, despite the fact that many believe we are still actively in a recession or at least a recession-style environment; it has also gone on to impressive growth in the near term.

With more organizations looking to automate their assembly processes, making throughput more regular and less dependent on human needs and desires, more assembly robots are coming online to meet the demand.

The current value of the global industrial robotics market, according to the report, is estimated to be $25.71 billion by the end of 2012. By the end of 2017, it's expected to reach $32.8 billion, with 176,586 units shipping by the end of this year and 234,122 expected to ship by the end of 2017.

The full report, meanwhile, goes on to break down a variety of points in the market, including market drivers like the growing use of industrial robots in developing markets and their use outside of the automotive industry.

The report also tackles challenges to the industry, like the need for constant training of human employees on how to operate and maintain the robots and misconceptions held by employee unions.

The industrial robotics market is an impressive one to watch; while it doesn't exactly have high total unit sales, the sheer price per unit fuels some exciting numbers when the scope of the market is determined. With more and more businesses looking to normalize their output by replacing human workers with industrial robots – not to mention improving the bottom line with the use of same – it's clear the move toward automation in industry will carry on.

Just what the end results of such industrialization will be is unclear.

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