Five million industrial robots now work in factories worldwide

What happened

The IFR is an industry association for robot makers and research groups. It released the report in Frankfurt, Germany. The 5 million robots in operation are 9 percent more than a year earlier and more than double the number seven years ago. Growth was strongest in Asia, followed by the Americas, while Europe moved more slowly. The Robot Report also covered the figures.

China dominates the market. Its 354,000 installations in 2025 were 20 percent higher than in 2024 and almost 60,000 more than its previous record. Chinese robot makers installed 195,000 units at home, which gave them 55 percent of their own market. That share was slightly lower than the 57 percent they held in 2024, so foreign suppliers still sell a large number of robots in China.

The order below China changed. The United States installed almost 38,500 robots, up 12 percent, and passed Japan to become the second-largest market. Japan installed 36,219, down 19 percent, and the IFR does not expect a major recovery soon. South Korea installed 30,000, close to its level of about 31,000 a year since 2019. Germany was fifth, with fewer than 25,000, down 8 percent, though it still accounted for 41 percent of installations in the European Union. Other European markets also fell: Italy by 11 percent, France by 8 percent and Spain by 15 percent.

India installed almost 10,500 robots, up 15 percent, and ranks sixth in the world. Its installations have grown by an average of 27 percent a year since 2020. Brazil installed almost 4,300, up 38 percent, and its car industry more than tripled its robot installations. The IFR expects 655,000 installations worldwide in 2026 and about 806,000 by 2029, with China, the United States and India named as strong growth markets.

The engineering behind it

An industrial robot is usually an arm with several joints. Each joint has an electric motor, a gearbox and a sensor that measures its angle. A controller calculates how much each joint must move so that the tool at the end follows the right path. It then corrects the motors many times a second, using feedback from the sensors. This combination of motors, sensors and feedback control is the core of every robot arm.

A robot alone does nothing useful. It must be integrated into a production line. Engineers connect it to conveyors, safety fences, light curtains and other machines, usually through a programmable logic controller, a rugged industrial computer that runs the line. They must also design grippers, plan the robot's movements, set safe speeds near people and write programs that recover when something goes wrong.

The IFR expects advances in artificial intelligence, machine vision and sensing to make robots more capable. Machine vision lets a robot find a part that is not in exactly the same place every time, or inspect a product for defects. The IFR also expects easier programming and simpler integration to lower the cost of using robots and open new uses. Both trends move part of the work from mechanical setup into software and data.

The IFR links the demand to several causes: changes in population, labour shortages, and companies moving factories closer to home for reasons of supply chain safety, trade policy and conflict. Each of these pushes companies to produce more with fewer workers on the factory floor. They still need technical staff to install, program and maintain the machines.

What it means in Nepal

The sources do not cover Nepal, so this section is about the work and the skills. The report shows that robots are spreading fastest in Asia, and that India's market has grown steadily for five years. Where robots are installed, someone must design the cells, write the programs, keep the machines running and fix them when they stop. These jobs need a mix of electrical, electronic, mechanical and software knowledge.

Robotics is also a practical way to learn engineering as a whole. A small robot arm or mobile robot built for a project uses motor drivers, sensors, a microcontroller, feedback control and some programming. Getting it to move smoothly and safely forces a student to understand each of these parts and how they interact. The same skills apply to automated gates, packaging machines and many other controlled systems.

The IFR's emphasis on machine vision and easier programming points to useful skills for students. Learning to process camera images, to recognise simple objects and to connect a program to real motors is now possible with low-cost boards and free software. A student who has done this on a small scale will understand the basic ideas behind an industrial robot cell, even before seeing a real one.