Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics (IIEZ) The Higher School of Economics assessed the level of demand for industrial robots in high-tech sectors of the Russian industry, and also analyzed the companies' medium-term plans to expand the fleet of robots and their applications.
More than half (56.2%) of innovatively active enterprises from high-tech sectors of the domestic industry use industrial robots to solve various production tasks. Medium and large enterprises are leading in their implementation, among which the share of active users reaches 70%. Small enterprises are currently developing such solutions as an experiment.
Most often, innovatively active enterprises use industrial robots for packaging and unpacking (including palletizing) products (36.8%), loading and unloading (33.3%), as well as welding and laser cutting (31.6%).
In the next three years, 12% of the surveyed organizations are going to start operating industrial robots. At the same time, demand from current users may increase: more than a third (34.5%) of small and almost 60% of medium and large enterprises have announced their plans to expand the use of appropriate solutions, i.e. about four out of five enterprises using industrial robots currently.
Industrial robots can be scaled extensively. Thus, only one in seven innovatively active organizations is going to expand their use in at least one production process in which they have already been implemented, and every second (53.9%) is going to introduce them in new directions. Moreover, while 14.6% of companies plan to use robotic solutions in only one new production process, 17.5% plan to use them in two, and 21.8% plan to use them in three or more new production processes.
Seven out of ten innovatively active enterprises using industrial robots noted that the introduction of robotics had brought them a certain economic effect, which in about one in three cases exceeded expectations and made further robotics a priority. Only 3.1–4.4% of enterprises, regardless of their size, were disappointed in the use of robotics due to the lack of significant results. Every fourth company (26.5%) was not yet ready to assess the effect of the introduction of robotics.
"The results of the study suggest that business considers industrial robotics among the tools for modernizing production, along with the acquisition of more modern machine tool models; at the same time, it is more intended for use in new production sites than in existing ones. The effects of the introduction of robotics are generally positive, but depend on the situation in a particular enterprise. It can be assumed that as successful experience spreads, the introduction of robotics in the Russian manufacturing industry will gradually increase, but a boom should not be expected at least until a new phase of active renewal of production assets begins," Sergey Lozinsky, Deputy Director of the Center for Investment Analysis at the Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.
The empirical basis for the analysis was the survey data, which was conducted in 2025 as part of the project "Monitoring the Innovative Behavior of Enterprises", implemented by the IIEZ of the Higher School of Economics since 2009. Enterprises with up to 100 employees are classified as small; enterprises with more than 100 employees are classified as medium and large. Enterprises that carried out activities in 2023-2025 aimed at developing and launching innovative products or creating and implementing innovative production and business processes were considered to be innovatively active.
