Asia Pacific Social Robots Market 2024–2033

Reports Description

The Asia Pacific Social Robots Market was valued at USD 6,425.7 million in 2024 and is expected to reach USD 53,180.9 million by 2033, at a CAGR of 27.76% from 2024 to 2033.

Social Robots interact with Humans and other robots through social skills and behaviors. They possess various social interactive capabilities, such as verbal and nonverbal communication and social etiquette. Social robots can do various social interactive jobs, such as motivating, coaching, educating, criticizing, giving feedback, social support, and dialogues.

Asia Pacific Social Robots Market: Growth Factors

The Increasing Demand for Social Robots from Healthcare Applications

The demand for social robots is increasing in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries due to the increasing geriatric population, growing healthcare awareness, and technological advancements in the robotics industry. The demand for social robots is mainly increasing in hospitals due to their ability to assist medical professionals and surgeons in patient care treatments and surgical procedures.

Social robots are used in healthcare to gather patient data, analyse and interpret disease patterns, and suggest treatments. They directly contact and interact with patients for collective primary information and enquire about diseases, which reduces human contact and thereby decreases the chances of infections.

Social robots communicate with patients to reduce social loneliness and provide emotional and psychological support, increasing their adaption in hospitals and psychological treatment centers.

The growing usage of social robots in performing minimally invasive surgeries, reducing infections, and increasing surgical accuracy, precision, and flexibility is expected to boost their adaptation to the healthcare industry.

Furthermore, factors such as the increasing adaptation of emerging technologies, the rising investment in research and development activities, the growing emphasis on healthcare awareness programs, and the growing usage of social robots to perform surgeries in remote locations are expected to drive the market growth of social robots during the forecast period.

Rising Demand for Social Robots in Consumer Goods and Retail Industry

The rising demand for social robots in the consumer goods and retail industry to interact with customers, transform customer experiences, and streamline operations is expected to boost the market growth of the Asia Pacific Social robots market during the forecast period.

Social robots interact with consumers in the retail and consumer goods industry to seek feedback, collect data and analytics, and provide retailers with valuable insights to enhance personalized customer experiences and optimize inventory management.

These capabilities are critical for data-driven decision-making in retail environments. Social robots perform various functions in the retail industry, such as scanning and tracking inventory, checking price tags, replenishing store shelves, and doing many other supplementary jobs. These functions are, in turn, boosting the usage and implementation of social robots across the retail and consumer goods industry.

Furthermore, the growing adoption of social robots in the e-commerce industry for material handling, effective supply chain management, enhanced operational efficiency, and product packaging is expected to drive the demand for social robots across the globe. For instance, Amazon, an E-commerce platform, reduced the number of workers and cut operating expenses by 20%. Thus, the factors above are expected to drive the adoption of Social robots globally.

Asia Pacific Social Robots Market: Restraints

High Initial Investment and Stringent Regulations

The implementation and adaptation of social robots require a huge initial investment. These social robots are costly because they require high costs, specialized expertise, and better internet and digital infrastructure connectivity. The operations and processes related to social robotics are run on advanced technologies and well-established digital infrastructure.

The initial investment required to implement robots is costly, and ongoing maintenance costs can also add up quickly because it requires technical skills and expertise, such as programming, maintenance, and troubleshooting. The absence of skilled professionals and the high wages of these skilled professionals enhance the overall implementation and operational cost of social robots, thereby reducing the implementation across developing and underdeveloped countries.

Implementing social robots across many end-use industries can create potential job displacement and re-engineering issues, which in turn create concerns about job security, especially for workers whose skills are no longer needed due to task automation. Cybersecurity-related issues also create challenges in the adoption and integration of social robots.

Social robots run on various emerging technologies and digital practices. These practices create large chunks of data, thereby creating cybersecurity risk. Social robots and emerging technologies are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, leading to significant data breaches and financial losses. Thus, the abovementioned factors are expected to restrain the market’s growth.

Asia Pacific Social Robots Market: Opportunity

The growing integration of Social Robots in the Automotive and Educational end use applications

The growing usage of social robots in various end-use applications, such as automotive and educational end-use applications, is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market during the forecast period. In automotive applications, social robots conduct various tasks such as car scanning, seatbelt inspection, quality control, assembly line inspection, wheel alignment, driving tests, and labeling labels onto vehicles.

As a result, automotive manufacturers and social robot vendors are forming collaborations by expanding their product lines. For instance, UBTECH, a Shenzhen-based robotics firm, and Chinese electric carmaker NIO collaborate to advance China’s humanoid robot industry rapidly.

Many research and educational institutes use social robotics for teaching and experimental purposes. The integration of social robots in educational institutes has the potential to revolutionize future education systems. Social robots provide personalized learning experiences, enhance student engagement and motivation, and provide customized teaching experiences. They can also teach languages and skills. Social robots also assist in mitigating educational disparities by reaching remote areas with limited access to quality education.

Many educational institutes use social robots to teach students languages and communication skills. Conversations, role-playing scenarios, pronunciation exercises, and interactive dialogues with students’ social robots allow them to practice speaking and listening in a foreign language. Thus, the growing integration of social robots in educational and automotive applications is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market during the forecast period.

Asia Pacific Social Robots Market: Segmentation Analysis

The Asia Pacific social robots market includes component, technology, end user, and region segments. Component divides the market into hardware, software, and services. The hardware segment dominated the global social robots market and is expected to maintain its dominance during the forecast period.

Various hardware components, such as body parts of electrical and electronics components, actuators, generators, control systems, sensors, electronic control units, torso (body and arms), microcontroller/firmware, and electrical and mechanical components, are mainly used in social robotics operations.

These hardware-based social robotics components are mainly used in medical, healthcare, electronic, retail, and consumer goods applications. Their lower operational costs and growing adaption in various end-use applications are mainly driving their adaption across the region.

The software component segment is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period, owing to the growing integration of social robots in healthcare and automotive applications.

Software-based social robots perform various functions, such as controlling the robot’s basic functions and managing hardware resources, promoting the promotional integral derivative controllers, integrating data from multiple sensors to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the robot’s environment and determining the optimal path for the robot, and facilitating communication between the robot and human operators.

By technology, the machine learning technology segment held the highest market share in 2023 and is expected to keep its dominance during the forecast period owing to the growing integration of machine learning technologies to improve robots’ intelligence and autonomy. Machine learning technologies are integrated into social robots to enhance computer vision, imitation learning, self-supervisory learning, and assistive medical technologies.

Furthermore, social robots driven by machine learning are used in hospitals for micro-surgeries such as unclogging blood vessels because machine learning algorithms enable social robots to detect anomalies, predict maintenance needs, enhance overall productivity, provide rehabilitation support, and deliver personalized care.

The computer vision technology segment is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period. Computer vision-integrated robots interpret visual data using advanced AI models similar to human vision. Computer vision-enabled social robots are used for various applications, such as autonomous navigation, object detection, gesture and human pose recognition, and facial and emotion recognition.

By end use industry, the healthcare segment dominated the Asia Pacific social robots market in 2023 and is expected to continue dominating during the forecast period owing to growing investment by private companies and governments across the region in the healthcare industry.

The growing implementation of social robots in hospitals, clinics, and surgical centers to support and help people and the increasing development of social robots in many surgical centers to perform many invasive surgeries and reduce errors are some of the factors expected to drive the market growth of this segment during the forecast period.

Many hospitals are implementing social robots to help elderly people with tasks like timely medication delivery. Various factors, such as growing research and development activities in the medical field and increasing collaboration between healthcare facilities and social robot developers, are expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market during the forecast period.

The consumer goods and retail end-use industry is expected to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period owing to the growing implementation of social robots in the retail industry to perform inventory management, customer services, staff alerts, order processing, and storekeeping. Furthermore, growing investment in the retail and consumer sector, rising disposable income, changing lifestyle, and growing penetration of the E-commerce sector in the consumer goods and retail industry are some of the factors propelling the market growth of this segment during the forecast period.

Report Scope

Asia Pacific Social Robots Market: Regional Analysis

The Asia Pacific social robots market is segmented by region into China, India, Japan, ASEAN, South Korea, and the Rest of APAC. Among all these, China dominated the Asia Pacific social robots market and is expected to maintain its dominance during the forecast period.

Various factors, such as growing investment in emerging technologies, well-established end-use industries, supportive government policies, the availability of skilled expertise, and the rapidly growing senior population in the country, are mainly driving the growth of the Chinese social robot market. China is the world’s leading installer of social robots, accounting for 55% of all new installations in 2023.

Some of the factors propelling the market growth during the forecast period are a robust technological base, strong policy support, an excellent robotics manufacturing foundation, a well-established industrial chain, technological capability, and a growing demand for social robots in a wide range of industrial applications. China’s automotive industry is the largest in the world, which is also a boon to Chinese robotic adoption, as the auto industry is a major purchaser of industrial robots.

List of the prominent players in the Asia Pacific Social Robots Market:

• AlterG Inc.
• ABB Limited
• Kiva Systems
• Toshiba Corporation
• Kuka AG
• Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd
• InVia Robotics Inc.
• Fanuc Corporation
• Honeywell International Inc.
• Bionik Laboratories Corp.
• Blue Frog Robotics SAS
• Blue Ocean Robotics ApS
• Embodied Inc.
• Furhat Robotics AB
• Haapie SAS
• Intuition Robotics Ltd.
• Knightscope Inc.
• Motorika USA Inc.
• MOVIA Robotics Inc.
• SoftBank Robotics
• Others

The Asia Pacific Social Robots Market is segmented as follows:

By Component

• Hardware
• Software
• Services

By Technology

• Machine Learning
• Computer Vision
• Context Awareness
• Natural Language Processing

By End Use Industry

• Healthcare & Pharmaceutical
• Education
• Media and Entertainment
• Consumer Goods & Retail
• Electrical and Electronics
• Automotive
• Others

Regional Coverage:

Asia Pacific

• China
• Japan
• India
• New Zealand
• Australia
• South Korea
• Taiwan
• Rest of Asia Pacific