§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Industry what is his latest estimate of the number of robots currently being used by British industry; and how this compares with the figures for the other countries of the EEC, the United States of America and Japan.
§ Mr. Kenneth Baker[pursuant to his reply, 8 February 1982, c. 255]: The British Robot Association announced today—9 February—that within the last year the number of robots in Britain has risen from 371 to 713, an increase of 342.
We estimate that there are 9,500 robots in Japan and 4,500 in the United States. In the EEC the figure for the Federal Republic of Germany is 2,300, for France 600 and for Italy 450. Sweden has 1,700.
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