Robotics as a strategic lever for Europe and the key role of Italy

These are some of the questions at the heart of the new brief by the Sector Strategies and Impact Department, which analyzes the strategic role of robotics, a key sector for industrial applications and the provision of services to businesses and end consumers, which is expected to accelerate significantly in the coming years.

Read the key messages of the study and download the document for further details.

• Robotics is a branch of mechatronics that deals with the development of devices capable of performing movements and manipulations with a certain level of autonomy, replacing actions or tasks performed by humans.
• The robotics market has historically been dominated by industrial robots (approximately 60% of global sales value), but the service robotics market has also grown significantly at the same time. This market segment includes professional service robots (whose use requires professional training, e.g., cleaning robots, hospitality, surgery) and domestic robots (also known as consumer robots, as they do not require specific skills – e.g., cooking and cleaning robots comparable to household appliances).
• The European Union and Japan dominate the most technologically advanced segments of the value chain (known as super-assembly), while China is the main supplier of raw materials, processed products, and components. The United States, on the other hand, play a significant role in the supply of certain semi-finished products and in the assembly phase.
• Non-consumer robotics recorded trade worth almost $80 billion in 2024. The EU ranks first among exporters ahead of the US and China, while the United States is the leading importer, followed by Europe and China.
• Italy is a global leader in robotics: it is the second largest producer of industrial robots and the second largest market in terms of number of installations in the EU, as well as the sixth bigger exporter in the world (with the US, Germany, and France as its main destination markets). This leadership is supported by:
  • a solid and highly specialized production system, with manufacturing activities concentrated mainly in Northern Italy in areas with a strong manufacturing specialization, where mechanical, electronic, and digital skills are strongly integrated;
  • strong specialization in engineering, which fuels a complex innovation ecosystem made up of universities, centers of excellence, and technology transfer centers, making the country the fourth most prolific in terms of scientific publications in the sector and among the top ten inventors in the world.
• New generation robotics will be characterized by increasingly smart, dynamic, and sophisticated robots capable of perceiving, analyzing, and acting in the surrounding environment with increasing levels of autonomy, as well as by the possibility of manufacturing and deploying humanoid robots on an industrial scale.
• These solutions represent a strategic lever to enable the European Union to address key challenges related to productivity in a context of demographic decline, new care needs for an aging population, and priorities such as defense, economic security, and strategic autonomy.
• In order to maintain their current competitive advantage, the European Union and Italy must address three critical issues in particular: (i) the accumulated delay in the field of artificial intelligence, which is crucial for the development of new generation robotics, (ii) the fragmentation of the European innovation ecosystem, characterized by the dispersion of funding and limited collaboration between companies in research, and (iii) the absence of a comprehensive industrial policy for the sector that would guarantee continuous and adequate public funding and stimulate private investment.