A global race is underway to bring robotics into our everyday lives, with a new generation of AI-powered robots promising greater flexibility.
Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence mean robots are being adopted for tasks ranging from working alongside humans in warehouses, to delivering packages on city streets, to inspecting dangerous locations.
What’s more, robots are increasingly capable of learning on the job — and experts say Canada stands to miss out if we don’t embrace adoption at this critical time.
If there’s a buzzword in artificial intelligence right now, it’s “physical AI” — something that was on full display at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
The promise is that physical systems, when kitted out with sensors — machines like robots, autonomous vehicles or industrial equipment — can act logically and responsively in the world when paired with current approaches to AI.
At CES, Google and American robotics company Boston Dynamics announced they’re teaming up to test AI-powered robots in Hyundai auto factories — two models of a machine named Atlas.
While experts say we’re still a long way from the kind of general-purpose humanoid robots that might one day live in our homes, washing the dishes and folding the laundry, we are at a moment where AI is shifting into the physical world.
Traditionally, robots are programmed top-down to take on a specific series of steps; that’s fine for tightly controlled environments with repetitive, infrequently changing tasks, like the robotics found on a factory floor.
But using the approach that’s led to so much success in generative AI means you can train robots in a bottom-up way, making them more “plug and play,” or essentially able to learn on the job.
This opens up robotics adoption to smaller companies that “don’t want to have to do coding and a lot of programming,” said Hallie Siegel, CEO of the Canadian Robotics Council.
“When there’s sufficient intelligence baked into that process, the robot itself can learn how to complete a task. It doesn’t need to be coded.”
This newer approach means robots can not only adapt more quickly, but also take on “much more sophisticated tasks,” where “you can bring them to a level of reasoning and thinking,” said Raquel Urtasun, a computer science professor at University of Toronto and CEO and founder of autonomous trucking company, Waabi.
And machines that need to move safely in dynamic environments, like autonomous vehicles, can be trained in virtual environments.
At Waabi, Urtasun said, “what we did was build the metaverse for self-driving, meaning a simulator that is as realistic as the real world.”
China driving robotics innovation, adoption
Just as robotics technology is at this critical point, experts say Canada lags behind.
Globally, China has emerged as the industry leader. In 2024, just over half the industrial robots installed worldwide — some 295,000 of them — were in China, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
Until recently, China imported much of their robotics. But that’s changing quickly — and it means the country is leaving others behind.
“China is trying to speed up their own manufacturing,” said Susanne Bieller, general secretary of the IFR. “Not only producing for their own market, but they are looking more and more to bring robots also to other parts of the world.”
Robots are on the cusp of a boom, combining sophisticated hardware with today’s AI technology, but as countries like China surge ahead, Canada is falling behind. For The National, CBC’s Nora Young breaks down what’s getting in the way.
According to ABI Research, the overall global robotics market was valued at nearly $50 billion US in 2025 — an 11 per cent jump over 2024 — and could reach as high as $111 billion US by 2030.
At the same time, Canada’s adoption of industrial robotics is faltering. In 2024, the country ranked 13th in operational stock, putting us behind countries like Spain, India and France, and well behind leaders like South Korea, China, and the U.S.
The situation worsens if you take the automotive sector out of Canada’s equation, where our adoption rate is quite high, said Siegel.
All of this is also going on while we continue to see sluggish productivity in Canada — an issue that the industry says connects to robotics adoption.
“There’s enough studies out there that prove that companies using and adopting robots are actually more competitive. They’re more productive,” said Bieller.
Canadians companies in search of markets
Canadian companies also face challenges in domestically marketing robotics, according to Siegel.
While Canada ranks fifth in the number of service-robotics companies per capita, for example, Canadian companies “are by and large kind of frustrated because they have to sell internationally in order to grow,” she said.
“Every time they do that, they’re widening the productivity gap here in Canada” — essentially exporting the sector’s productivity gains, Siegel said.
Avidbots is a Kitchener, Ont.-based company that makes floor-cleaning robots for commercial purposes, relying on sensors like the ones used in autonomous vehicles and a range of AI approaches. While their machines are designed and assembled in Canada, that’s not where most of their market is.
“If you look at the entire history of the company, we probably have deployed 15 per cent in Canada,” said Pablo Molina, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.
There’s a number of reasons for the lag in Canadian adoption, he said, including a simple lack of familiarity with robotics.
“Due to lack of training, they just don’t understand. They don’t see the ROI (return on investment), the value,” Molina said. “They think it’s OK to continue doing it the old way.”
Urtasun points to the regulatory framework in Canada as stifling adoption.
“The U.S. has been traditionally very open to the technology deployment, right? And really enabling innovation in a responsible manner,” she said, noting that Waabi’s trucks are driving on public roads in Texas, but not in Canada due to regulatory restrictions.
“Innovation has to be deployed much faster than what we see in Canada.”
This is “a key moment where Canada has to be all-in” in terms of better deploying robotics technology, Urtasun said, “obviously in a responsible manner.”
National robotics strategy
Industry representatives, like the Canadian Robotics Council, say Canada would greatly benefit from a national robotics strategy.
While we do have a new AI strategy under development, council CEO Siegel said that “if we keep over-emphasizing just the software piece, we’re not really going to get the transformational aspects of what these technologies promise us.”
China, South Korea, Germany and Japan all have standalone national strategies in place, which include specific measures around things like training, incentives and funding.
When asked about Canada’s future plans, Innovation, Science and Economic Development said in a statement to CBC News that the Canadian government is “not pursuing a standalone national robotics strategy” at this time.
But it noted the “ongoing” work on Canada’s broader AI strategy will examine a wide range of issues “related to the development, commercialization and adoption of AI technologies, including applications related to physical AI systems and automation,” adding that it is expected “to address issues such as talent, adoption and public trust in AI systems.”
