Abstract
The market of industrial robots has been growing these years. The shipping amount attained in 2014 was over 230,000 units in the world, and better result was achieved in 2015. There have been great changes in more than 30 years of history of industrial robot market. The market has been expanding from limited countries to worldwide and from limited industries to various applications. However, the scale of the robot market is still small compared to the remarkable growth of the manufacturing market in the world. Innovations are required in the system integration, materials, and elemental technologies for wider deployment and usage of industrial robots. The innovation in system integration has a goal to provide customers with the best fit and reasonably priced solutions for the problems in manufacturing processes, as well as to balance the profit for system integrators. The innovation in material and elemental technologies has a goal to solve the problems that still remain in robot technologies since the beginning of the market. Higher reliability and better cost performance should be established for the advanced applications in the future. The collaborations of various industries are also required to achieve the innovations.