According to the infographic, over 200,000 robotic dogs and 150,000 Pleo robotic dinosaurs exist, and many third-party apps have already enhanced their behaviors.
The RobotsAppStore has developed an infographic covering the market for robot applications. The infographic shows a number of apps already available at RobotsAppStore, which consumers will soon be able to purchase,” according to Elad Inbar, RobotsAppStore.com founder and CEO.
Inbar said.
“Robot-Apps, like feeding the family pet, folding your laundry and even converting robotic dogs into security devices are not science-fiction anymore. There is no doubt that robot-apps will be a strong, dynamically growing, and profitable market in the near future.”
The infographic also reveals that the RobotsAppStore is already working with several hundred robot-app developers from all around the world, according to a prepared statement from the company. And the visual tool indicates that there are many more potential developers out there, if you consider that 250,000 teenagers who built and programmed robots while competing in First LEGO League this year, as they are the developers and consumers of the future.
Considering the progress that's taken place over the past several years in hardware and software, we will probably see more and more useful, programmable robots coming to the market in the upcoming years, and a marketplace for robot-apps emerging to provide the functionality for these robots, the release noted.
Source: RobotsAppStore.com (Click Image To Enlarge)
COMMENTARY: I have been following robotic trends and tracking the robotics market for a couple of years now, and the production robotics sector is undergoing tremendous growth as manufacturer's seek ways to become more efficient and reduce their manufacturing costs. Likewise, the personal robotics sector, which consists of household robotic appliances and toys, is expected to experience significant growth over the next five years.
Two companies which I have covered in previous blog articles include Sifteo in a blog posts dated August 16, 2011 and March 21, 2011 and Modular Robotics in a blog post dated March 8, 2011. Both produce robotic toys or intelligent games that require specialized software programming and hardware. Sifteo sells separate software modules that allow their owners to play different games, and are now soliciting software programmers to design more game apps for them.
I have been saying to some of my VC friends that the next emerging market will be robotics, and a few VC firms have began to invest in robotic startups, but it did not occur to me until now that those robots, whether for production or personal use, require applications make them run, and as the number of robots increases, and robotics becomes mainstream, there will be an exponential need for robotic apps.
In blog post dated December 13, 2011, I pointed out the fragmented nature of the robotics market, highly specialized nature of robotics devices, and lack of a universal robotic interface and operating system. Most of the robotic app development is being done at the academic level, in colleges and universities like the MIT Media Lab, Carnegie Mellon, etc. The closest thing to a robotic operating system is Robot Operating system or ROS.
Since there no large scale universal standard operating system standards in the robotics market like there is in computers (Apple OSX, Microsoft Windows 7, Linux Open Platform, etc) and mobile devices (Google Android and Apple iOS), and until a standard wins and is universally adopted by the robotics industry, robotic app development will grow slowly, because limited programming resources have to be spread over numerous robotic devices, and at much higher costs.
The launch of RobotsAppStore.com is a great idea whose time has come, and proof positive that there is a need, although relatively small for the present time (see infographic), for an iTunes-like site where end-users can go to obtain robotic apps for their robotic devices. As far as I can tell, the Robots App Store sells mostly robotic toys like the popular NAO the Robot, Pleo the Dinosaur, Aibo the Robot Dog, Darwin the Robot, and iRobot the vacuum cleaner, to name a few. They do sell a few apps, but not many at the moment. They are presently taking new robotic app solicitations for beta-testing and consideration for future sale in the store, but are not selling any robotic apps at the present time. I am in the process of obtaining additional information about the Robots App Store for inclusion into this blog post at a later date.
Courtesy of an article dated December 22, 2011 appearing in Robotics Trends
Great post!
The links to the RobotsAppStore web site are broken.
Posted by: Anna | 01/15/2012 at 01:15 PM