They're ready to work with you. Are you ready to work with them?
Think Pixar's robotic lamp, as it turns to face you before the movie starts. Cute, right? Sinister? Never. At least not to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), which this week released 2015 World Robot Statistics report.
By 2018, says the report, global sales of industrial robots will on average grow by 15 percent year on year, and the number of units sold will double to around 400,000 units.
Image: "Greetings. Are you ready to collaborate?" The UR5 robotic arm from Denmark's Universal Robots has proved useful to a variety of companies' production processes. Photo courtesy of Universal Robots
