ROBOTICS CLUSTER

6. THE GLOBAL ROBOTICS AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS SECTOR
One limitation of regional business development initiatives is that they often focus on a single geographic
area to the exclusion of others. In today’s current business climate, competition, as well as investment,
partnerships, and more, is just as likely to come by way of international sources as it is from state or
national sources. In addition, critical robotics technologies, along with business and research trends,
emerge throughout the world. As a consequence, a critical first step in the examination of the Massachusetts
robotics sector begins with a description of the overall market.
6.1. A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING AND EVALUATION
The word “robotics” can refer to a wide swath of technologies, applications, markets, and even industries. As
such, describing the totality of the robotics sector, a critical first step in the evaluation of the Massachusetts
robotics ecosystem, can be problematic and inexact. Ongoing, rapid technological churn only makes the
process more difficult.
6.1.1. Taxonomizing the Sector
For this study, the robotics ecosystem is classified into four distinct robotics sectors based on the
intersection of the payment/funding sources for robotics technologies, products, and services rendered, and
the markets and industries they support (Figure 1):
• Consumer Sector: The consumer sector is characterized by markets where products are
purchased by individuals for their own use to assist, educate, and entertain. These products are
referred to as consumer robots.
• Industrial Sector: The term “industrial” often equates strictly to manufacturing, but it can also
be used in the broader sense to characterize industries that produce some type of tangible
product or asset. In this sense, the industrial sector is a goods-producing sector. Markets
consisting of the industrial sector include manufacturing (discrete and process), construction, and
mining. Not unexpectedly, robotic systems employed by companies in the industrial sector are
called industrial robots.
• Professional Services Sector: At one time the robotics sector was limited to systems
employed for industrial manufacturing, and almost exclusively by the automotive industry. Over
time, systems designed for purposes outside of industrial automation entered the market, forming
the professional services sector, which itself is further broken down into the public services sector
and the commercial services sector:
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THE MASSACHUSETTS ROBOTICS CLUSTER
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