While six in 10 senior leaders expect their organizations to operate a fleet of robots in the next five years, only four in 10 have a formal strategy for managing a mixed human-robot workforce, an Intel study has found.
“If we think about the landscape of robotics, we are clearly seeing a transformational event occurring as we move from the fixed machines of the past that conducted more fixed tasks in support of very specific needs,” said John Healy, vice president of Intel’s industrial and robotics division. “In addition to this opportunity and ambition, there is a kind of uncomfortable truth that many organizations are actually not yet ready for that shift or that transformation to occur. So, that presents an opportunity to now take action to ensure that preparedness can be addressed.”
The company‘s study included responses from 800 senior business and IT leaders, robotics specialists, and government and healthcare officials in organizations with annual revenue of at least $500 million. Respondents worked across a variety of industries, including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, defense, and smart cities.
“This is maybe a warning or a call to action across all of these markets that investment in readiness is as important as maturing the technology and capability,” Healy said. “This disconnect could well underpin the pace of adoption and slow down adoption, if not addressed.”
Organizations need a clear strategy for implementing robots
Intel identified five factors that will separate organizations that scale robotics successfully from those that stall at the pilot stage. The first is strategy. Only 40% of leaders have a formal strategy in place for managing a human-robot workforce.
Yet 67% of respondents said they are confident that their organizations will be ready to manage a mixed human–robot workforce by 2030.
One key part of developing a strategy, Healy said, is deciding who is in charge of robots when things go wrong.
“One of the challenges that started to emerge that may give rise to this gap is the lack of clarity of ownership across organizations, because autonomous systems, by definition, as they emerge represent a fragmentation across how an organization is run,” he said.
The second is developing a skilled workforce. Two-thirds of leaders said they expect implementing robots will make their workforces more skilled. This is because robotics will allow the human workforce to move to different tasks.
“Robots that take over more mundane, repetitive tasks unleash the workers to do work that is more creative, more discerning, more thought-oriented, to ensure they can work synergistically and create more as an outcome,” Healy said.
However, four in 10 said the availability of skills and talent is blocking their organization from scaling robotics.
Safety, form factor, and scale are also top of mind, finds Intel
Next, Intel said safety could become a bottleneck for automation. On one hand, 31% of leaders said robotics have delivered the most value in increasing safety.
“[Robots] take on the dangerous, physically demanding tasks, and robots can reduce injuries in the workplace,” said Healy.
On the other hand, 55% said safety concerns have delayed robotics deployment, and 68% believe clearer global safety standards would help accelerate adoption. Healy said we should think about safety as a system of systems, and something that is implemented at every layer.
“Every layer of the solution needs to be considered and designed for safety from the outset, and that’s been our experience over decades,” he said. “You cannot solve for safety at the end. You define safety at the beginning.”
With humanoids dominating recent conversations in robotics, it’s no surprise that shape is on the top of many leaders’ minds. Seventy-seven percent of leaders said robotic performance matters more than appearance.
When it comes to form factor, Healy emphasized the importance of implementing systems that fit the particular problem you’re trying to solve.
“Robots need to be defined to fit the work and what they interact with,” he observed. “So, a robot in a manufacturing environment doing precision engineering may have multiple appendages or arms as it holds complex componentry.”
Finally, Intel said ability to scale will be key. More than three-quarters of leaders said critical robotics applications require decisions within 100 milliseconds, with almost a quarter requiring responses in less than 10 milliseconds. This will require a robust AI system that works across hundreds of robots.
Right now, 42% of organizations have a defined, funded edge or on-device AI strategy, while 39% are actively developing one, according to Intel.