The rise of cordless machinery and robotics in our industry seems inevitable.

I heard a statistic the other week that something like 280,000 robotic mowers are sold every year in Europe at the moment. They have embraced the concept a lot quicker than we Brits seem to have.

And new data from a company called Juniper Research has forecast that over 1 in 10 American households will own a consumer robot by the end of the decade, up from under 1 in 25 last year.

At this early stage in the market, shipments are expected to be dominated by so-called ‘task’ oriented robots assigned to take over household chores, such as lawnmowing or vacuum cleaning.

The new research called Worldwide Consumer Robotics: Markets & Strategies 2015-2020, found that the performance of more complex robots while improving, are heavily limited by present-day technology. Thus, in order to meet consumer expectations, smarter, more contextually-aware robots are required.

The findings say that achieving a leap forward in AI (artificial intelligence) will demand not only more computing power, but also much greater efficiency if processing is to be offloaded from the cloud. Therefore new approaches in chip design are likely to become important.

Additionally, the research found that cost and trust are key factors in preventing mass take-up. Component economies of scale have yet to be achieved, while R&D costs are high. Meanwhile, I guess based on documentaries such as The Terminator, studies apparently indicate that trust between robots and humans is rapidly eroded  - even if a robot is able to perform better than a human on average.

"The state of consumer robotics could be compared to the PC in the late 70s," said research author Steffen Sorrell. "Venture capitalist and corporate investment has ramped up tremendously recently – they know that this is the start of a paradigm shift in the way we use and interact with machines."

So if these experts are to be believed, it appears to be a pure and simple fact that robots will find an increasing presence in your stores, and therefore in the pages of Service Dealer, over the coming years.