Transport Robots Lead 2025 Service Robot Growth, Per IFR

What did IFR find for 2025?

The International Federation of Robotics reported in a release dated September 30, 2026 that global professional service robot shipments rose 24% in 2025, to almost 250,000 units. Transport and logistics was the leading application, and it is the segment most operators should study first when deciding where a robot fits.

The release gives two figures for that segment. The headline says 117,000 units, while the body text, as reprinted by I-Connect007, says 117,500 units, up 21% with a 47% share of the category. Both point the same way: transport accounted for nearly half of professional service robot shipments in 2025.

IFR describes transport robots as units used to move goods, automate material flows and support delivery processes, as summarized by Automate. If your facility moves pallets, totes, carts or linen, this is your segment.

Where the other segments landed

Professional service robots overall grew 24%, but the category is not one market. Medical robots rose 19%, and consumer service robots rose 37%. The consumer figure is the fastest growth in the release, yet it describes products most commercial facilities will never evaluate.

Hospitality ranked second, covering mobile guidance, information services and telepresence. Professional cleaning came third, driven largely by floor-cleaning applications, according to Archynewsy's summary of the IFR release. That ranking matters for facilities weighing cleaning against transport as a first project.

Read the numbers as shipments, not fleets

IFR figures count reported shipments. They do not show how many robots are working inside logistics facilities at any given moment, as FreightGraph notes in its coverage of the release. A unit shipped in 2025 may still sit in a crate or a staging area when the year closes.

The service robot figures also come from a supplier survey. The 2026 report draws on 238 service robot suppliers, and IFR does not present the results as representing the entire industry. It also cautions against comparing figures across reports, because sample composition can change. Treat the 24% as a directional signal, not a precise market measurement.

Why transport is pulling ahead

IFR's position paper names labor shortages as the strongest driver of service robot adoption. For a dock manager trying to staff a second shift, that pressure is immediate. Transport tasks are repetitive and measurable, and they are often where a shortage shows up first.

Financing is the other driver. Traditional equipment sales remain the largest monetization model, but Robot-as-a-Service is already the dominant model among the US professional service robot suppliers in the survey. IFR notes this can move spending from capital investment toward operating expense, which is why more operators now set a monthly cost against an unfilled shift.

Industrial installations tell a parallel story. According to IFR, the United States installed 38,400 industrial robots in 2025, up 12%, passing Japan's 36,200. Those are factory units rather than service robots, but they reflect the same wider push toward automation.

Is a transport robot the right first step?

For many facilities, yes, but only where the flow is repetitive and the route stays stable. A robot carrying a predictable load along the same corridors pays back faster than one asked to improvise. Start by describing the work in a single sentence, then test that sentence against your floor.

Before anyone signs anything, collect four things for the route under consideration.

• Daily move counts on each route, with peak hours marked.
• Doors, dock levelers, elevators and any mixed foot traffic along the path.
• Load weight, cart dimensions and whether each handoff is manual.
• The person who clears a blockage and the person who answers a fault on each shift.

How Service Robot Co. approaches the first route

Service Robot Co. is a full-service commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We are OEM-neutral, so we select the robot that fits the route rather than the one a single manufacturer happens to make. We then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide network of US engineers, so one partner answers for the full lifecycle.

Customers get our robots through a lease on a 3-year term, with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment. That assessment is where route counts, dock conditions and staffing questions get written down before any commitment is made. A pilot on a single route is often the most sensible way to learn what the numbers really look like.

Where the hype runs ahead of the data

IFR gave humanoids only a short paragraph. According to the release coverage, about 7,000 full-size humanoids above 140 cm sold globally in 2025 for commercial and professional use. Roughly 17 transportation and logistics service robots were recorded for every one of them, which is a useful reality check for anyone pitching a humanoid for a hallway job.

IFR also says no single form factor will dominate every application. Mobile, stationary, drone, legged and humanoid systems each carry advantages depending on the job and the economics. For a route that runs over flat floor between known points, a mobile base is usually the simpler answer.

The obstacles IFR names are practical: high training and maintenance costs, evolving safety standards, and a lack of clear business cases in industrial settings. Plan for each of them from the first day, not after the first fault.