Robotics is not a single market: it is a mosaic of specialised platforms, from the industrial arm to the robotaxi.
3.1Industry: arms and cobots
The historical core: arms from FANUC, ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa, and cobots designed to work alongside humans. This is deterministic robotics at its peak: fast, repeatable, profitable in structured environments.
3.2Logistics: the conquered sector
Amazon has passed a million warehouse robots. The French champion Exotec equips Carrefour, Uniqlo or Decathlon with its Skypod shuttles. Logistics is the proven use case of the decade.
3.3Humanoids
Figure, Tesla Optimus, Unitree G1, Agility Digit, Apptronik Apollo, 1X Neo, Boston Dynamics Atlas. On the French side: Wandercraft's Calvin and Pollen Robotics/Hugging Face's Reachy 2 for research.
3.4Quadrupeds, services, health, agriculture
- Inspection: Spot, Unitree Go2, ANYbotics.
- Home and services: vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers, delivery, social robots such as Enchanted Tools' Miroki.
- Medical: da Vinci, exoskeletons, Wandercraft's Atalante X and Eve.
- Agriculture: Naïo Technologies, autonomous tractors, robotic harvesting.
3.5Drones, defence and autonomous vehicles
DJI dominates the civilian market; Parrot has repositioned itself on professional and defence uses; Ukraine has become the laboratory of robotic warfare. On the robotaxi side, Waymo is making the autonomous vehicle commonplace: the first mass-market robot truly deployed at scale.
3.6Learning and building: the open path
Robotics now has an open-source ecosystem: Hugging Face's LeRobot, the SO-101 arm, Reachy Mini, the MuJoCo, Gazebo and Isaac Sim simulators, ROS 2. It has never been so cheap to build your first robot.
How to choose?
Three questions: is the task structured? Buy, or rent through Robot-as-a-Service? Learn with simulation and a small arm rather than starting with a humanoid.
Sources
IFR; websites of the manufacturers cited; RoboActu on French players; Fortune on Hugging Face/Pollen Robotics; MLQ on Physical AI and Waymo.
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