Robohub.org
 

1,000 Robot Makers!


by
26 November 2012



share this:
Well — almost 1,000. Presented on this map are 977 robot manufacturers and the top 20 robotics universities and research facilities. Every type of company; every facet of the industry; most industrialized countries of the world are represented. From big companies like KUKA, ABB and Fanuc to start-ups like Redwood Robotics in California and Etnamatica in Sicily; from Iceland to Western Australia. These companies are robot makers; they may or may not also be robot users. That’s for another map.

Red markers reflect 200+ industrial robot makers; Green is for the 170+ start-up companies; and Blue is separated into two groups: “S” for service robots for governmental and corporate use while “P” covers service robots for private or personal use. Yellow is used to show the location of the top 20 robotic research and educational facilities. A country-by-country table is shown below.

The global map does not cover an additional 825 ancillary businesses such as image systems, software developers, engineering and consulting firms, integrators and resellers, designers, servo, laser and stereo camera providers, etc. Nor does it cover 225 other educational facilities and research labs. These can be found in our Ancillary Businesses and Educational and Research Facilities Directories.

The map is also limited by my own research capabilities, language translation limitations, and scarcity of information about robotics companies in emerging countries. It show a single entry for a company headquarters regardless how many branches, subsidiaries and locations that company might have.

In spite of all those caveats, at first glance I was impressed by the sheer quantity of the markers. One can easily see that many of the start-ups and service robotics companies are located near prominent Yellow-marked universities and research labs in clusters surrounding Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Harvard, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Willow Garage, the University of Tokyo and TITECH, etc. Or areas of innovation and energy like Seoul, Korea, Israel and New York City.

Red markers – industrial robot makers – stand out for their predominance in the industrial sections of the world: Germany, Switzerland and Central and Western Europe and the UK, Japan, Korea and the Great Lakes area of the US.

Blue markers – service robots (every other type of robot except industrial) are everywhere as are Green start-up markers. These are the emerging robotics companies in non-industrial robotics: robots used in healthcare, scientific labs, for defense and security, in academia, as toys, for remote presence and autonomous mobility underwater, on the ground and in the air and for a myriad of other uses.

This map will continue to grow above the 1,000 mark as I continue my research. If I’ve missed your company or companies that you know about, please send me a message.

 




Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.

            AUAI is supported by:



Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack



Related posts :

Surviving the paper deluge: a one-year study in learning from demonstration

With the explosion of robotics research, staying current in fields like Learning from Demonstration is a monumental challenge.

Soft robotic heart offers new way to study disease and test life-saving devices

Researchers have developed a soft robotic model of the human heart that can mimic disease and provide a realistic environment for testing the next generation of cardiac devices.

A mini robot to simplify dental treatment

  24 Jul 2026
Researchers have developed a miniature dental robot that could one day automatically prepare teeth for crowns.

Pressure-free growing robots for soft medical robotics

A Q&A with the best paper award winner at RoboSoft.

Interactive world simulator for robot policy training and evaluation

  20 Jul 2026
Yixuan Wang discusses his faithful world simulator that allows robots to learn how to push, pick up, and grasp objects.

Undergrads’ weed-killing robot wins top prize

  17 Jul 2026
Their robot can travel through a vineyard or orchard without a human operator, zapping weeds with a small amount of electricity.

A flapping robot swims and flies like a diving bird

  15 Jul 2026
An aerial-aquatic vehicle developed at EPFL and MIT could lead to a new class of devices for ocean exploration.

Wristband enables wearers to control a robotic hand with their own movements

  13 Jul 2026
By moving their hands and fingers, users can direct a robot to play the piano, shoot a basketball, or manipulate objects in a virtual environment.



AUAI is supported by:







Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack




 















©2026.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence