WCA September 2020

From the Americas healthcare, agriculture and infrastructure. According to the IFR’s statistical yearbook, World Robotics , Japan is the world’s major industrial robot manufacturer, delivering 52 per cent of the global supply in 2018. The Intelligent Robot Development and Supply Promotion Act of Korea is a move to develop robotics as a core industry in Korea. The third basic plan for intelligent robots, published in 2019, promotes systematic selection and concentration of promising public and private sectors. Focus areas include manufacturing businesses, selected service robot areas (including healthcare and logistics), next-generation key components and key robot software. The robot-related budget for 2020 is $126 million. World Robotics showed a new record stock of around 300,000 operational industrial robots in the Republic of Korea in 2018. Korea doubled its number of industrial robots in operation in five years, ranking third behind Japan and China in 2018. Robotics projects funded by Horizon 2020, the European Union’s 8 th Framework Program, represent a range of research topics from manufacturing, commercial and healthcare use to consumer, transportation and agri-food robotics. Through this programme the European Commission will provide $780 million funding for robotics research and development over its seven-year lifetime. The main topics of the 2018-2020 work programme are the digitisation of industry through robotics; robotics applications in new areas; core technologies in robotics, such as AI and cognition; cognitive mechatronics; socially cooperative human-robot interaction; and model-based design and configuration tools. Germany’s High-Tech Strategy, in part, supports the use of new digital technologies within industry and administration. The PAiCE programme, with a funding budget of $55 million over five years, emphasises the development of digital industry platforms as well as collaboration between companies using these platforms. In particular, the robotics-oriented projects are focusing on the creation of platforms for service robotics technology in relevant application areas. Germany is the fifth largest robot market in the world and number one in Europe: in 2018, the number of robots sold increased by 26 per cent, to a record figure of nearly 27,000 units. With the support of the US government, the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) was launched for fundamental robotics research and development. The main goals focus on fundamental science, technologies, and the integrated systems needed to achieve collaborative robots assisting humans in every aspect of life. In NRI 2.0, a collaboration between academia, industry, non-profit and other organisations is encouraged. The NRI budget for 2019 was $35 million, with additional funding for robotics applications in defence and space provided through the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Mars Exploration Program. According to the IFR, robot installations in the USA increased for the eighth year in a row to a new peak in 2018.

Aerospace The airline industry, looking forward to better times ahead In mid-June, American Airlines felt able to announce it would be operating more domestic and international flights in July. The company had seen a little over 32,000 daily passengers on domestic flights during April but was flying more than 110,000 by the end of May. CEO Doug Parker said, cautiously, “Travel’s coming back. Slowly, but it’s coming back.” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in an interview that the airline had added 200 flights for June and was aiming for a further 300 flights in July. “I do think we’ve seen the worst,” he said. “Mid-April, while everyone was under stay-at-home orders and international restrictions were up in terms of travel for every country around the world, we really were at the bottom. So the optimist in me says we’ve doubled in the last four to six weeks as we’ve started to reopen our economy, still very much on the domestic side as compared to international.” During May, Southwest Airlines began to offer more flights to larger US cities, including Denver, Las Vegas, Nashville and Phoenix, and its stock gained as a result. Jonathan Kletzel, an aviation expert at professional services firm PwC US, attributed the increase in travel to a suppressed demand following the pandemic restrictions. “The summer vacation is a big component of this. School is out, if it’s not already out, and people want to go on summer vacation. There’s also cabin fever and there’s cheap tickets,” he said. At time of writing, nearly 3,000 aircraft are still standing idle and, according to Airlines for America, passenger volumes are down nearly 90 per cent compared to June 2019. This, however, is a slight improvement from April’s 96 per cent decline. Southwest’s international travel was scheduled to resume on 1 July; American expected to resume flights to Europe and Latin America in August, but once overseas flights are back to something approaching normality the industry could look different and maybe even smaller, according to Mr Kletzel. “You will see some of the existing players not here in the next six months.” The airline industry lobbied aggressively for government relief aid, and received billions from the record $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package signed into law on 27 March. Passenger airlines received a total of $25 billion in loans and loan guarantees and $25 billion in direct grants. Companies also secured a suspension of the 7.5 per cent airline excise tax in return for accepting restrictions on stock buybacks and issuing dividends if they took government money. Those changes and the cash infusion helped companies working in the industry to survive, but nothing could stop the job losses. According to Labor Department figures, air transportation lost 50,000 jobs in May, after losing 79,000 jobs in April, but the overall economy added 2.5 million jobs during May and unemployment slowed

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2020

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