IFR Counts 117,500 Logistics Robots Sold in 2025 and About 7,000 Full-Size Humanoids
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IFR Counts 117,500 Logistics Robots Sold in 2025 and About 7,000 Full-Size Humanoids
The International Federation of Robotics' service-robot tally shows warehouses, not humanoids, absorbing the units: 47% of professional shipments against under 3%.
The International Federation of Robotics said on September 30 that professional service robot shipments rose 24% in 2025 to nearly 250,000 units, with transportation and logistics taking 117,500 of them. The figures come from the federation's World Robotics 2026 Service Robots report, summarised in a press release.
The number that matters here is not the 24% headline but the denominator under the humanoid figure. IFR counts about 7,000 full-size humanoids (140 cm or taller) sold for commercial and professional use in 2025. Against roughly 250,000 professional units, that is under 3%.
Where the 2025 units went
Transportation and logistics held 47% of professional service robot shipments, up 21% on the year. Working back from that growth rate implies about 97,000 units in 2024, a figure derived here and not published by IFR. Hospitality robots, covering mobile guidance, information points and telepresence, came second. Professional cleaning robots, mostly floor cleaners, came third.
- Professional service robots, all250K units
- Transportation and logistics118K units
- Surgical robots8400 units
- Full-size humanoids7000 units
Source: IFR World Robotics 2026 Service Robots, via IFR press release, accessed 2026-10-04
IFR President Jane Heffner said sales rose across all three segments with double-digit growth. Professional service robots gained 24%, medical robots 19% and consumer service robots 37%.
Humanoids against the rest
Surgical robots sold 8,400 units in 2025, up 57%, according to IFR as reported by Australian Manufacturing. That is more than the full-size humanoid count, and it is a category with regulated clinical use, not factory pilots.
| Segment, 2025 | Units | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| Professional service robots | nearly 250,000 | 24% |
| Transportation and logistics | 117,500 | 21% |
| Surgical robots | 8,400 | 57% |
| Consumer service robots | 34.2 million | 37% |
The consumer line dwarfs everything else because it is vacuum and mowing robots at household prices. It is a different market from the one humanoid makers are pricing against.
What holds humanoids back
IFR named safety standards, training costs and the business case as the barriers to adoption, per Australian Manufacturing. A report on the same data from the Indian trade site Infralog added that most current applications still need human supervision.
The deployment evidence so far is thin. Figure retired its F.02 fleet after a BMW run, as we reported in Figure's molten-steel numbers, and the logistics robots that make up 47% of IFR's count are mostly wheeled units that move shelves and totes. The software side of physical A.I. is covered in our piece on Runway's open-weight Praxis-1.
Limits of the data
IFR's report draws on a sample of 238 suppliers, and the federation warns against comparing figures across different editions of World Robotics, per Australian Manufacturing. Revisions to earlier years can change a growth rate without any unit being sold.
What would change this read is a 2026 humanoid count above 20,000, which would put the category near 10% of the professional total. IFR's next edition will show whether that happens.
Sources
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