THEItalian robot industry is growing rapidly: the number of businesses active in this sector it grew 10% in five years, reaching 104, for a total of 429 employees. Milano leads the ranking with about 12 companies and 110 employees: they follow Roma (11 businesses and 63 employees), Napoli (5 thousand companies and 13 thousand employees) e Torino (5 thousand companies and 25 thousand employees). Another two thousand companies are scattered between Brescia, Padua, Bari, Bologna, Florence, Monza, Bergamo and Salerno. The data is contained in Made in Italy innovation report "100 Italian robotics and automation stories", realized by Symbola Foundation ed Enel in collaboration with the Ucimu Foundation, which brings together Italian machine tool manufacturers.
According to the study - presented on Wednesday at Enel's Rome headquarters - worldwide, the robot market is worth 16,5 billion dollars; 2018 units were delivered in 422 alone, an increase of 6% over the previous year. In this context, Italian industry is sixth by total number of industrial robots installed (69.142 in 2018), preceded by China, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Germany.
In our country they are also produced different technologies used in space. For example, some devices installed on the NASA InSight probe, which landed on Mars in 2018, and on those that will leave this year for the ExoMars mission, also on the red planet, are made in Italy. Among all, the most important product is perhaps the Larri reflective hemisphere (Laser Retro-Reflector for InSight), developed by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn) with the support of the Italian Space Agency (Asi) to transmit the position of the lander on the surface of Mars.
The study by Enel and Symbola "collects 100 virtuous examples of companies operating in the Made in Italy sector of robotics and automation - he explains Francesco Starace, managing director of the energy group – stories of researchers, the academic world and companies that have the ability to anticipate the times, once again testifying to the competitiveness and avant-garde of the Italian system in the international arena. We are convinced that our country, with its excellence and skills, can be an example of sustainable growth on a global level, demonstrating, in line with the Assisi Manifesto, that it is possible to bring the human dimension back to the center of the economic model".
Hermes Realacci, president of the Symbola Foundation, instead underlines how “already today robotics contributes to important Made in Italy supply chains such as agri-food, fashion, wood-furniture, mechanics. And it is crossed by the challenges of the future, starting with the need to tackle the climate crisis, combining empathy and technology. The 100 experiences recounted in the Report testify that if Italy makes Italy it is able to win any challenge, thanks to its ability to synthesize functionality, beauty, humanism, daughter of a culture that in the most advanced technological challenges does not forget the search for a more humane economy and society, as we state in the Manifesto of Assisi".
