Analysis of Technology Convergence in Robotics and Technological Portfolios among Robot-Related Organizations

摘要

Robot technology has played a significant role on the automation of manufacturing industries and the substantial improvement of productivity over the past half century. Robots are composed of various sophisticated technologies related to different fields such as mechanical engineering, control systems, electronics, and computer science. Under these circumstances, technology convergence among these fields could be one of the key factors to drive innovation. The understanding of this innovation is crucial for industries to make decisions whether to focus on technologies as their core competence, or to introduce them by collaborating with others. In addition, it is also critical for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to assess which policies and measures should be taken. This study aims to analyze the technology convergence in the field of robotics, and to propose an objective methodology to evaluate the differences and characteristics of technological portfolios among major robot-related organizations. This analysis, based on a citation network to patents was made for cases where the scope of the technologies, such as the robot technologies described in this paper, is relatively similar and it is difficult to identify the differences among organizations using only the International Patent Classification (IPC).