2. Data and statistics 21 Sectors Agriculture is also seeing considerable interest in robots following John Deere’s acquisition of the ‘see and spray’ robotic start-up Blue River Technology for For the present and immediate future, robots are mainly US$305 million. Cobots are being used in the RASberry used in manufacturing (IFR, 2018b) particularly in project at the University of Lincoln, where human industries like automotive and electronics where jobs strawberry pickers are supported by mobile robots are: acting as transporters (Duckett et al, 2018). Finally, the − dirty (e.g. metals and machinery: 44,500 units growing application of cobots in the health and social sold in 2017); care sector is expected to be driven by significant − dangerous (e.g. plastics and chemicals: about demand for labour as the UK is forecast to be short of 20,000 units sold in 2017|); around 400,000 care workers by 2026 (Matthews-King, − difficult (e.g. electronics; 121,300 units in 2017); 2018). and − repetitive (e.g. automotive industry: over 130,000 units sold in 2017). Typically, these jobs would be handled by large industrial traditional, caged robots. All aspects of manufacturing willremain the principal market for cobots, but there is evidence of growth in service robots for home and domestic use (Jacobs and Virk, 2014).There are also clear emerging markets for industrial cobots (CB Insights, 2018)that contribute to lowering labour costs and enabling strategies such as the reshoring of manufacturing, in the same type of contexts but a new set of industries (IFR, 2018b): − dirty (e.g. construction and demolition: 1,100 units sold in 2018); − dangerous (e.g. defence: 12,000 units bought in 2017); − difficult (e.g. surgery: US$1.9 million worth sold in 2018); and − repetitive (e.g. farming: 7,200 units sold in 2018). Internationally, 75% of total robot sales go to five countries: China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States and Germany (IFR, 2018c). There are also extensive and growing robotics markets in logistics and warehouses, particularly in countries that experience labour shortages. For example, in the US, Amazon’s Jobs Day in August 2017 saw only 20,000 applications for 50,000 job openings (Morris, 2017). Major start-ups in this robotics space include Kiva (acquired by Amazon in 2016), Seegrid, Clearpath and Fetch. Cobots are also being used by DHL within its life sciences division for picking (i-SCOOP, 2017). In high-volume contexts there is evidence that jobs will be displaced; Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has a 100,000 sq. ft. facility in Shanghai processing up to 200,000 orders per day but only four human workers (LeVine, 2018). This raises the issue of changing property risks with concentration of high-value equipment and limited human supervision. Taking control: robots and risk