Where The Robots Are: Which Cities And States Lead The March Of The Automatons?

The Rust Belt is rapidly becoming the domain of industrial robots, with Michigan being home to a staggering 12 percent of the nation’s automated workforce.

In terms of pure density, Detroit and another Michigan city, Grand Rapids, trail only Toledo just over the Ohio border as the Big Three of places with the highest ratio of robots to humans, a Brookings Institution analysis shows.

A map of robot clusters shows an almost uncanny, and perhaps predictable, correlation between the nation’s heavy industries and robot populations.

Related Link: So What If Robots Wipe Out Puny Humans?

Nearly A Quarter Million Soldering (And Then Some) Every Day

Brookings said there are 233,305 robots currently working overtime “burning welds, painting cars, assembling products, handling materials, or packaging things in just 10 Midwestern and Southern states.”

The top states:

• Michigan: 28,000 robots, 12 percent of the nation’s total.
• Ohio: 20,400, 8.7 percent
• Indiana: 19,400, 8.3 percent.

March Of The Automatons

Statista, using information culled from the study, lists the per-capita rank of five metro areas at the top of the automation food chain.

The Motor City has the most robots overall, almost three times that of any other metro area, Brookings said. If the automatons ever gain sentience, the outcome of a human-robot war wouldn’t be pretty.

Here are the heavily mechanized five cities as of 2015 (considering the pace or robotech, the numbers are probably already much higher):

• Toledo: The highest density of robots, with nine per 1,000 workers, or a total of 2,400, a 28 percent increase since 2010.
• Detroit–Warren–Dearborn: 9.5 robots per thousand workers, a total of 15,001, up 21 percent since 2010.
• Grand Rapids–Wyoming: 6.3 per thousand flesh-and-blood workers, a total of 3,100 bots, up 23 percent.
• Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky: 5.1, 2,900, 27 percent.
• Nashville metropolitan area: 4.8 bots, 3,900 total, 23 percent.