ABSTRACT

Who leads the robotisation race in Europe? For the answer, this paper develops a novel analytical framework, primarily by applying the concept of the global value chain to robotisation. By doing this, we investigate in detail the entire robotisation chain, from robotics developers over robot manufacturers to companies that deploy the industrial robots. For the R&D-intensive part of the chain (robotics development), we analyse robotics patent data from PATSTAT combined with firm data from ORBIS while for the capital-intensive part (deployment of robots) the source of information is the International Federation of Robotics. Our results show that the European robotisation landscape is fragmented into three groups. The first includes economies (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark and France) that have the highest densities both in robotics development and in robot deployment. Countries of the second group (Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland) possess good positions only in some specific parts of the chain, while the lagging behind region (the majority of Central and Eastern Europe) is integrated into the robotisation chain solely by robot deployment. Hence, one of the main related policy challenges is to find ways for upgrading along the robotisation chain.

摘要

谁在欧洲引领机器人化竞赛？为了回答这个问题，本文开发了一个新颖的分析框架，主要是将全球价值链的概念应用于机器人化。通过这样做，我们详细调查了整个机器人化链，从机器人开发人员到机器人制造商，再到部署工业机器人的公司。对于链的研发密集部分（机器人开发），我们分析了来自 PATSTAT 的机器人专利数据以及来自 ORBIS 的公司数据，而对于资本密集部分（机器人的部署），信息来源是国际机器人联合会。我们的研究结果表明，欧洲机器人化格局分为三组。第一个包括经济体（瑞典、德国、奥地利、丹麦和法国）在机器人技术开发和机器人部署方面的密度最高。第二组国家（西班牙、意大利、比利时、荷兰和芬兰）仅在链条的某些特定部分拥有良好的位置，而落后地区（中欧和东欧的大部分地区）仅被整合到机器人化链条中通过机器人部署。因此，主要的相关政策挑战之一是寻找沿机器人化链升级的方法。