Bring out your robot; your Roomba, your Robosapien, your Pleo, your AIBO, they’re going to want to see this. A new report states that personal robotics industry is expected to reach USD$15 billion in 2015. If we compare this to previous predictions, they all bode massive growth like a choir of singing synthesizers.

The new report, made by ABI Research, examines the consumer market for robots. It is not at my disposal, but GizMag has the rundown: the market will reach $15 billion by 2015. Baring in mind that the number only refers to personal robotics, this is indeed a monstrous increase, explained in part in the introduction to their report:

Today there is a wider range of single-function task robots on the market and in development, and entertainment robots have increased in complexity and sophistication while becoming much more affordable than Sony’s expensive Aibo product lines of the past.

Standardized efforts around several integral operating systems are starting to replace proprietary efforts in the commercial robotics space, and these should trickle down to personal robots. The personal robotics market will continue to see major advances at affordable consumer prices. This presents additional revenue opportunities for a wide variety companies, including small robotics-focused software companies, microcontroller vendors, as well as larger semiconductor vendors, behemoths like Intel and Microsoft, and giant automotive manufacturers.

Although there are some discrepancies in specific focus and methodologies — previous predictions echo that a massive growth is to be expected. The Japan Robotics Association predicted, for example, that the personal robotics market would reach $20B by 2010. The United Nations Economics Commission (UNEC) and International Federation of Robotics (IFR) predicted a bit less in 2004, putting the market for personal- and service robots at around $17.1B by 2010.

As Big as the Digital Music Market?

To get a better idea of what all these numbers really mean (for people like me who do not keep constant taps on market values), it might be handy to have a look at something more familar: The MP3/digital audio player market was at around $5 billion in 2007 according to an estimate released by the CEA (word doc). The overall digital music market is expected to reach $14.9 billion in 2010. (Digital music and digital audio players are practically omnipresent as it is).

So does that mean robots will be as present by 2015 as MP3 players are today? Well, that would be difficult to answer. But we can certainly expect our weekend visits to the neighbor to include greeting a robotic vacuum cleaner more often, saying hello to a household security bot or even saying hello to a human abroad through one — like the recently announced Rovio teleconferencing robot pictured above. Presumably they won’t be as evident on the streets; it’s hard to envision a person jogging with a Robosapien attached to his arm … although, a flying MP3 player might be something worth considering.

Do you have a wish-list for robots you’d like to see made in 2008-2009?

Links & References

• Image Credit: WowWee’s Rovio via Slashgear