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The current slump does not necessarily signal the demise of American robotics. The industry is expected to perk up again by the end of 1988, partly because of increases in U.S. competitiveness caused by the falling dollar. Struggling American manufacturers have begun to adopt the electronic robot technologies of the Japanese and, like U.S. automakers, are moving their own assembly plants overseas to help cut costs. Above all, U.S. robotmakers have adjusted their own expectations of how the industry will perform in the future. "We're in a solid business with solid growth," says Bruce Haupt, a marketing manager in the division that oversees robotmaking at IBM. "Our early expectations were out of line, but they have been altered."
Even so, most analysts expect the number of U.S. robotmakers to keep shrinking through the mid-1990s. By that time robotics technology may have taken another impressive leap forward, with the U.S. once again expected to be the technological trailblazer. Advances now being explored in American universities and research laboratories could lead to the creation of machines capable of walking, improvising tasks and seeing (some robots can already do this crudely, through computerized video cameras). By then, the robots' masters may have learned how to exploit their wondrous inventions without falling into the kind of painful doldrums that now afflict their once glamorous industry.