According to research from the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Association for Advancing Automation (A3), the robotics industry has gotten off to a fast start in the first half of 2017. A3's most recent quarterly report on North America provides the following information about the first six months of 2017: • The robotics market posted its best-ever first half in four separate categories — number of units ordered, order revenue, number of units shipped and shipment revenue. • At $1.62 billion, orders for motion control and motor products were up 14 percent over the first half of 2016. • The machine vision market generated $1.24 billion in sales during the first half, its best-ever performance and an 11 percent jump from the same period last year.
In the second half of the year, A3 experts predict that the software and application-specific machine vision markets will continue to trend up, while cameras, lighting and imaging boards will be flat and the optics market will contract.
A3 is comprised of three sister organizations, all of which are based in Ann Arbor: the Robotics Industries Association, the Advancing Vision + Imaging Association, and the Motion Control & Motor Association.
