Domo Arigato

Robots are not quite up to Asmovian levels worldwide yet, sadly. But we've hit about 1 million industrial robots worldwide. Check out the distribution of robots about the globe, from IEEE:

Unsurprisingly, Japan is kicking serious metallic ass. And these figures don't even count adorable robot dogs and creepy robot women (hello uncanny valley!).

Assuming our march toward an all service economy continues despite the downturn, we'll probably never catch up to Japan on industrial robots, so we'd better make a go of it with service robots, America.

Via BoingBoing