The corporate bet on robotics is getting bigger, and faster. Six in 10 business and technology leaders expect their organizations to have a fleet of robots within the next five years, while leaders surveyed say full-scale deployment could double operational output.
The problem is that organizational readiness is moving at a slower pace.
Only 40% of organizations currently have a formal strategy for managing a workforce in which humans and robots work alongside each other, according to The Robotics Readiness Gap: Five Success Factors for the Next Era of Automation, a 2026 report commissioned by Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). The research found that 67% of respondents expect their organizations to be ready for a mixed human-robot workforce by 2030.
That gap between expectation and preparation is emerging as one of the biggest challenges facing the next phase of industrial automation.
The study, conducted by Coleman Parkes Research for Intel and Man Bites Dog, surveyed 800 senior business and IT leaders, robotics specialists, and government and healthcare officials at organizations with annual revenues of at least $500 million. Respondents came from the United States, China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and South Korea, across industries including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, defense and smart cities.
The findings show that the robotics question has moved beyond whether companies will automate. Increasingly, the issue is whether they can build the people, systems and infrastructure required to operate machines at scale.
The Automation Decision Is Moving From Factory Floors to Boardrooms
Robotics adoption is expanding across industries that historically relied heavily on human labor.
The report found that organizations deploying robots are reporting gains in productivity, quality and service speed. Leaders also expect the economics of automation to improve quickly. On average, respondents expect deploying a robot to become more cost-effective than hiring a human for comparable work within about three years.
Four in 10 leaders, however, say upfront investment remains a barrier to scaling robotics. Integration with existing systems, technical complexity, ongoing maintenance and uncertainty over return on investment are also among the leading obstacles.
That creates a difficult equation for companies. The expected payoff from robotics is increasing at the same time that the cost and complexity of moving beyond individual deployments remain high.
The report describes an industry approaching what it calls a critical threshold, with robotics moving from isolated automation projects towards broader operational infrastructure.
That transition will require companies to treat robotics as part of their operating model rather than as a standalone technology purchase.
Six in 10 Expect Robot Fleets
The scale of the expected expansion is significant.
Six in 10 leaders surveyed expect their organizations to operate robot fleets within five years. Leaders also estimate that full-scale robotics deployment could double operational output.
The research shows that responsibility for robotics is already spreading across the corporate hierarchy. Chief technology officers oversee robotics initiatives at 29% of organizations surveyed, followed by chief information officers at 18% and chief operating officers at 16%. Twelve percent have dedicated robotics or automation leadership.
The numbers point to a technology that is increasingly crossing departmental boundaries.
Robotics affects production, IT infrastructure, workforce planning, safety, cybersecurity and operations. As deployments expand, decisions made by one function can directly affect the others.
Yet 74% of respondents expect workforce planning and robotics strategy to become inseparable by 2030, despite fewer than half of organizations having a formal strategy today.
The Workforce Is Changing Before Companies Have Finished Planning for It
The report challenges the assumption that robotics will simply remove people from the production process.
Respondents said robotics has already freed or redeployed the equivalent of 14% of current workforce capability. That figure is expected to reach 24% by 2030.
Sixty-seven percent of leaders believe robotics will make human workers more skilled. Seventy-five percent expect entirely new human roles to emerge around managing, maintaining and collaborating with robots.
But companies are confronting a skills shortage as they attempt to make that transition.
Four in 10 respondents said a lack of available skills and talent is preventing their organizations from scaling robotics. The largest shortage is in edge computing and on-device AI, followed by data engineering, cybersecurity, AI and machine learning, safety certification and regulatory compliance, robot operation and fleet management, and maintenance and hardware repair.
The workforce planning problem extends into HR. Forty-one percent of respondents said HR leaders are not equipped to plan for a workforce that includes robots.
The challenge therefore extends beyond finding people who can operate machines. Companies need employees who understand the interaction between robotics, AI, data, cybersecurity and physical operations.
Safety Is Already Slowing Deployment
The industry’s readiness problem is also visible in safety data.
More than half of respondents, 55%, said safety concerns have delayed robotics deployment. Among organizations that already use robots, 48% reported experiencing a safety incident.
At the same time, 31% of leaders identified safety as an area where robotics has delivered the greatest value.
The contradiction reflects the changing environments in which robots are being deployed. Machines operating inside controlled industrial settings face different risks from robots working around employees, customers, patients or the public.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents believe clearer global safety standards would accelerate adoption. Only 37% said their organizations currently have standardized global robotics safety standards.
Cybersecurity adds another layer of risk. Forty-two percent of leaders said cyber and data risks are blocking robotics expansion.
As robots become connected systems capable of sensing their surroundings, processing information and making decisions, the attack surface extends beyond traditional IT infrastructure.
Humanoids Are Drawing Attention, but Specialized Robots Lead
The surge of interest in humanoid robots has not translated into a leading position in enterprise expectations.
Autonomous mobile robots are expected to have the greatest impact over the next five years, according to 20% of respondents. Fixed industrial arms follow at 14%, inspection and sensing robots at 11%, and service robots and drones at 10% each.
Autonomous vehicles and exoskeletons each account for 8%. Humanoids and quadrupeds each account for 6%.
Four in 10 leaders believe humanoid robots will never become viable for mass deployment.
The research also found that 65% of respondents believe robot form factors are currently dictated by technological limitations rather than real-world requirements.
For businesses, that distinction matters. The machines most likely to scale are those capable of performing defined tasks reliably, safely and economically within existing operations.
Robots Are Being Asked to Make Decisions in Milliseconds
The physical nature of robotics places demands on computing infrastructure that conventional enterprise software does not.
Seventy-six percent of respondents said workplace robots must operate reliably across multiple shifts without interruption. Seven in 10 said robots need to understand and respond to spoken instructions.
Latency requirements are equally demanding.
Fifty-five percent of leaders said their robotics systems require response times between 10 and 100 milliseconds. Another 23% require latency below 10 milliseconds. Only 18% said their operations could tolerate response times above 100 milliseconds.
More than three-quarters therefore require robotic decisions within 100 milliseconds, while almost one-quarter require decisions in less than 10 milliseconds.
That requirement is pushing companies towards edge and on-device AI. Forty-two percent of organizations surveyed have a defined and funded edge or on-device AI strategy for robotics, while another 39% are developing one.
For machines operating in physical environments, sending every decision to a remote data center can introduce latency, connectivity and reliability constraints. Local processing can allow robots to respond closer to real time while reducing dependence on constant network connectivity.
Five Conditions Will Determine Who Can Scale
Intel’s research identifies five factors that it says will determine whether organizations can move from robotics deployment to large-scale adoption: strategy, skills, safety, shape and scale.
Strategy requires clear ownership and the integration of robotics into the broader operating model. Skills require companies to prepare employees for human-robot collaboration. Safety extends across hardware, software, cybersecurity, governance and day-to-day operations.
Shape concerns how robots are designed for specific environments and tasks. Scale addresses the underlying computing infrastructure required for real-time processing, low latency and local decision-making.
The report’s findings suggest that buying robots is becoming the easier part of the equation.
The harder task is preparing an organization to run them.
Companies may be able to deploy an individual robotic system relatively quickly. Building an operation capable of managing fleets, integrating machines with existing systems, training employees, maintaining equipment, securing connected devices and meeting safety requirements is a considerably larger undertaking.
With 60% of leaders expecting robot fleets within five years, that preparation window is narrowing.
The next phase of robotics adoption will therefore be measured as much by organizational readiness as by the capabilities of the machines themselves.
