Experts in robotics from the scientific community, the academe and private business have together crafted "A Roadmap for US Robotics: From Internet to Robotics" to guide the Trump administration on a field that presents a huge opportunity but is a source of grave danger to U.S. employees.

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The 2016 edition of the Roadmap for Robotics, the latest in a series, is a 100-page report with inputs from 150 experts outlining the future of the robotics industry in the United States. It reveals the paths the robotics industry should take and what types of technologies Congress should invest in.

The report noted a significant growth in adoption of robot systems in industry even as manufacturing has added 600,000 jobs over the past six years. It said the past three years have seen quarter-by-quarter records in sales of robot systems for use in manufacturing.

"The USA has never utilized as many robots as they do today," said the report.

The report said a major new application domain has been in the adoption of "collaborative robots" that can operate side-by-side with humans. This trend is being aided by the adoption of new standards (ISO 10218 and ISO/TS 15066) that have provided a framework for how to design systems that easily can be adopted for a diverse set of tasks in a cost-efficient manner.

Logistics is seeing major growth in robotic systems. E-commerce is seeing annual growth rates in excess of 40% with new methods all driving new adoption of technology.

The report noted UPS' experiment in using Unmanned Vehicles for last mile package delivery. But for handling of the millions of different everyday objects "there is a need of have robust manipulation and grasping technologies but also flexible delivery mechanisms using mobility platforms that may drive as fast as 30 mph inside warehouses."

Big sales item for the home market has been vacuum and floor cleaners. U.S. consumers are now starting to see the introduction of home companion robots.

A new generation of autonomous systems are also emerging for driving, flying, underwater and space use. For autonomous driving it is important to recognize that human drivers have a performance of 100 million miles driven between fatal accidents.

"It is far from trivial to design autonomous systems that have a similar performance. For aerial systems the integration into civilian airspace is far from trivial but it does offer a large number of opportunities to optimize airfreight, environmental monitoring."

Opportunities lie in new research and development in multi-robot coordination, robust computer vision for recognition and modeling and system level optimization.

For space exploration, robots will land on asteroids for sample retrieval. For many of these tasks the core challenge is the flexible integration with human operators and collaborators.

The Internet of Things movement will facilitate the introduction of increased intelligence and sensing into most robot systems and will see a significant improvement in user experience.

The design of these robust, scalable and interoperable complex systems is far from trivial, and there are now new methods for systems design and implementation from macroscopic to basic behavior.

Congress should invest in robotics for use in the manufacturing industry that are highly intuitive and require little training.

TagsA Roadmap for US Robotics: From Internet to Robotics, Robotics, robotics industry, United States