ADOPT ROBOTS, OR PERISH? The perennial, and apparently insoluble, issue of the UK’s poor take-up of industrial robots is back in the news. First, there were glimmers of hope when the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) revealed that the UK installed 51% more robots (3,830) last year than it had the year before. Had Britain’s manufacturers at long last seen the light and realised that robots were key to their future – perhaps even their survival? Unfortunately not. It turned out that the surge in sales was largely a blip resulting from car-makers taking advantage of the super-deduction tax break before it ran out. The IFR expects UK robot sales to fall “sharply” this year, before possibly starting to recover next year. But even if you remove the distortions resulting from the large automotive orders, there were some positive indicators in the 2023 installation figures, with the food and beverage sector commissioning 59% more industrial robots than in 2022 (to reach a total of 555) and the metals industry raising its number of installations by 20% (to 324). Whether these increases were also driven by the super deduction incentive is not clear. We will have to wait for next year’s figures to see. The fact remains that the UK lags far behind its European rivals in the number of robots that it uses. In 2023, our robot population reached a grand total of 28,831 machines. Germany has about nine times as many (269,427), Italy three times as many (96,803), and France twice as many (58,572). The reason for this lag has been discussed widely by panels of experts and in numerous papers. There seems to be combination of reasons including: a reluctance by many British manufacturers to invest in cutting-edge hardware and software; a pride in “sweating” existing assets rather than upgrading to the latest technologies; and worries about antagonising workers by appearing to replace them with machines. Whatever the reason, the result is that productivity in the UK is falling even further behind levels in other industrialised countries. According to a recent report by Citi, growth in output per UK worker is at its slowest pace since the Victorian era, with output 36% lower than it would have been if growth continued at that same pace that it did from 1997-2008. It is now 24% lower than the US and 31% below that in the Eurozone. Against this background, the intervention by two former politicians, Tony Blair and William Haigh (see page 5), is fascinating. Aided by a team of experts, they have declared that if UK industry does not embrace robotics more enthusiastically, it risks falling even further behind rival economies. Failing to act now could “pose a serious risk to national security”, they warn. Blair and Haigh argue that the UK needs to use its strengths in AI to develop a new generation of AI-enabled robotics with “the potential to transform the economy, public services and daily life”. Achieving this will need buy-in from the government as well as industry, but the risks of not making better and wider use of robots are so high that we cannot afford to do nothing. Tony Sacks, Editor n COMMENT
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