Generally robots are the expression of automation, and they have (as a market) been growing where ever it makes economic sense. As processors get cheaper and more powerful more and more things make economic sense.
Yeah that's kind of it in a nutshell. The PC revolution was easy to see because computer hardware has been performing the same fundamental task for decades: computation. Memory, storage, processing, and I/O; that's it. All computers are basically the same in that sense. But that one fundamental task is so useful that virtually everyone benefits.
Because of this, an entire industry has focused on improving those 4 basic components of computing, making them ever cheaper and more capable. And as the capability increases, the utility increases as well.
It's not the same with robots. Robots are more likely to evolve gradually over time. There won't ever be one single thing you can point to and claim "that was the robot revolution" and it's going to be a lot slower because there won't be a Moore's Law for robotics.
Yeah that's kind of it in a nutshell. The PC revolution was easy to see because computer hardware has been performing the same fundamental task for decades: computation. Memory, storage, processing, and I/O; that's it. All computers are basically the same in that sense. But that one fundamental task is so useful that virtually everyone benefits.
Because of this, an entire industry has focused on improving those 4 basic components of computing, making them ever cheaper and more capable. And as the capability increases, the utility increases as well.
It's not the same with robots. Robots are more likely to evolve gradually over time. There won't ever be one single thing you can point to and claim "that was the robot revolution" and it's going to be a lot slower because there won't be a Moore's Law for robotics.