How does Australia develop its national capability in robotics?

"The Robotics Venture Factory would support local robotics companies to advance the commercial readiness of their technologies, enabling them to scale and create global businesses that access international markets..."

In Part 2 of our excerpt on National Capability, we explore the ingredients required to build a sustainable robotics industry including: investment, sovereignty, supply chains, commercialisation, adoption, shared infrastructure, clustering, robotics venture factory, and national challenges. This is another excerpt from the Robotics Australia Group submission to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources 's Discussion Paper on the National Robotics Strategy.

What do we need to do to develop our national robotics capability?

Investment / Access to Capital

During our consultations, we identified that access to capital is the key issue hindering development. For Australia to develop a thriving ecosystem of robotics and related companies, fundamental changes need to occur in the approach of Australian start-up founders, and investors. Because of their complex nature (hardware, software, human interaction etc), robotics startups need a longer runway of investment before being able to become profitable. Robotics companies (or businesses investing in robotics projects) need better support to help lower risks and costs. Assistance could be in the form of;?

• shared ownership schemes (between government or several businesses) to lower upfront infrastructure costs,
• government support/tax incentives for the time/cost to train personnel,
• assistance with risk mitigation (such as insurance support if things go wrong),
• tax offsets or lower interest against robotics purchases/projects, and
• accessible long-term loans for robotics projects.?

There is also an opportunity to increase the pool of available capital and increase public awareness and trust of automation and robotics. In recent years, Australians have been able to invest as individuals in startups through crowdfunding schemes such as the Birchal platform. The Government could incentivise investments specifically into robotics and automation startups. This would increase the pool of funds available for robotics, increase public awareness of Australian robotics and incentivise superannuation funds to invest in these projects.?

Investment is also restricted by?limited adoption of robotics by our local industries, which inhibits companies’ ability to scale in the domestic market. Given Australia’s strength in field and service robotics, incentives for companies to develop and adopt robotic technology in the construction, defence, resources, agriculture, environment, aerospace, and services sectors will directly impact on the development of sovereign robotics capability. For example, significant gains have been made in mining automation to the benefit of the Australian economy and similarly, scalable technologies are being developed in the AgTech sector. However, Australia currently does not develop industrial robots, therefore incentives that encourage adoption of such robots in sectors such as manufacturing do not have the same uplift potential as other sectors of the economy that rely on locally-produced robots.?

Sovereignty and Supply Chain

Australia has unique skills and capability in robotics and a growing ecosystem of companies which rely on those skills. Robotic technologies are vital components of the industrial internet (Fourth Industrial Revolution, 4IR) used in critical infrastructure and defence applications. A lack of skills and capability in these areas poses a credible national security risk. Australia needs to develop and maintain a strong capability in robotics products and services that underpin our critical industries, such as mining, agriculture and defence, in the same way it is recognised that we need a national capability in cybersecurity to protect the ICT industry. For this reason, our defence forces recognise robotics as a ‘sovereign industrial capability’ priority.

Contrary to expectation, rather than digitisation leading to the democratisation of technology across the world, it has instead led to the agglomeration of innovation. Over the past decade, we have witnessed the migration of skills, companies and capital to innovation clusters such as Silicon Valley. Since COVID-19, governments world-wide have recognised that value-creating activities such as building robots, developing related technologies and seeing these adopted in the domestic market are sovereign capabilities that need to be nurtured and protected. We should also recognise the value that could be created by building export-focused manufacturers (e.g., aerospace/space and disaster tech) in areas where Australia has competitive advantage (i.e., knowledge workers to exploit the higher value-added segments on the Smiling curve).

Australia’s robotics industry requires reliable access to resilient and trusted domestic and international supply chains for key materials and components. These complex global supply chains are vulnerable to disruption, resulting in unpredictable availability and costs. The National Robotics Strategy can analyse future supply chain needs and identify areas where Australia must have sovereign capability, helping grow ongoing supply in the future.

Commercialisation and Adoption

The pathway to commercialisation and adoption in Australia

Australia's poor performance translating research into commercial products is a well-known and complex problem - often referred to as the innovation imperative. It combines a lack of ambition, a failure to collaborate, limited access to venture capital, poor economic complexity and, most noteworthy, the absence of representation from industry who would be required to produce the technology or who would provide the conduit for adoption. While some of these weaknesses have been addressed in recent times with the creation of Robotics Australia Group, one of the most significant challenges remaining is the ability of our SMEs to scale and access global supply chains. There are many examples, where SMEs have been forced to move overseas in order to grow or have been acquired by multinationals – Robotics Australia Group is keen to partner with governments to discourage?this trend and retain the growth in Australia.

Our consultation process identified the path to commercialisation as a key weakness in?transitioning?robotics?from?the research and development (R&D)?stage?to?a market-ready?product in Australia. While some innovations in Australian robotics have market potential, they often require significant capital to commercialise and generally take longer than software or consumer-based technologies to achieve a return on investment. Often, the Australian market is not large enough to justify the development of high capital expenditure (capex) technologies. Policy initiatives, such as tax incentives and asset write-offs, can help facilitate the transition of high capex technologies to markets in and outside of Australia. Investment (of time and resources) should be focused on areas that show high potential to expand within the local market.?

To maximise the potential of research commercialisation, it is important for universities and companies to work collaboratively. Universities can provide the necessary research and intellectual property, while companies can take these findings and translate them into commercial products that benefit both parties. Companies are better positioned to develop and produce robotics and automation technologies as they have a deep understanding of market demands, manufacturing processes, and distribution channels. Companies can be motivated to invest in robotics and automation R&D to achieve a competitive advantage by being early adopters of new technologies. While research organisations may be vital to the development of new technologies, they may not be best suited to bringing these technologies to market and should be encouraged to release their IP for development.

Shared Infrastructure in Robotics

Australia will benefit from investing in infrastructure necessary to support AI-enabled robotics and automations companies, such as data centres, cloud computing, high-speed networks, rapid prototyping, high-fidelity experimental testbeds and environmental sensing infrastructure to support the development and deployment of new technologies. Australia is a perfect test bed for new robotic technologies, as has been evidenced by the testing of drone technologies in Australia by tech giants such as Google. Australia has a large land mass with scattered settlements (low population density), a wealthy population of early adopters of technology, and regulators that generally work in well with industry.?

The creation and maintenance of large-scale robotic test beds, or experimental facilities, are key to supporting the progression of robotic technologies through critical stages of hardware development, Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5 through to 9 (commercial ready). To date, Australia does not have these facilities. Test beds can act as ways to take R&D from theory to prototype and then to a minimum viable product that can be tested in the market. While testbeds are resource-intensive, this makes them well-suited to a shared and even remote-access format. To be successful, such test beds need to cater to a variety of robot systems that can be used to test the utility of algorithms and to supply modular interoperable hardware (plug-n-play) for remote testing against physical and virtual benchmarks. They also require validation, which exposes the need for frameworks (standard test methods and metrics) to assess the quantitative performance of different robotic technologies. The creation of a common testbed was a feature of Robotic Australia Group’s Robotics Venture Factory concept (see below).

The Importance of Clustering

Global evidence has demonstrated that high-technology industries, such as robotics, perform more strongly when heavily concentrated in regional ‘clusters’ in close proximity to universities that have leading expertise in the field. Silicon Valley could not exist without Stanford University, and the Silicon Valley Robotics cluster consists of more than 500 companies. Pittsburgh Robotics Cluster recently received USD$62m to enhance the cluster of more than 100 companies it forms around Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) , and a robotics factory to help create, accelerate and scale the development of robotics start-ups. The Boston robotics cluster, MassRobotics, would not exist without close proximity to the robotics research being done by MIT and Harvard, which has attracted the location of Amazon Robotics to the region. Proximity and relationships to entrepreneurs, industry experts, financial and accounting specialists, marketers, and related businesses also determine the success and intensity of a high-technology cluster.?

Clusters facilitate an environment that encourages the adoption we need for our fledgling emerging technology companies to grow and for the intertwined investment of talent and resources to solidify. They tend to be more productive and attract both investors and a highly skilled workforce, creating a hothouse for generating new ideas, new applications, and the establishment of new companies to exploit these. Australia already has notable hotspots that have attracted talent and funding for fundamental research, higher level research training, field robotics, and specific technology development (e.g., mining automation technologies). For Australia to be internationally competitive in the areas of robotics where it excels, we must support SMEs to advance their technologies up the Commercial Readiness Level (CRL) scale. For this to happen, existing hotspots must continue to be used to grow local ecosystems of innovation, with ready access to mentoring, finance, business and marketing advice, as well as providing an opportunity to build connections across the value chain. A national approach to developing new clusters to avoid duplication and competition?must also be explored.

The Robotics Venture Factory

One key potential solution to address some of these challenges, developed by Robotics Australia Group, is the development of a robotics venture factory. The ‘factory’ concept aims to build infrastructure that accelerates the creation of Australian made robotic solutions for a variety of sectors. It fills a gap that exists currently for robotics companies to navigate the final steps of solution development (TRL7 and TRL8) and scaling manufacturing into operations (TRL9).

The ‘factory’ provides?the necessary connective tissue between innovators, inventors, creators and researchers to investors, manufacturers, parts/component suppliers (both national and aggregated international supply chains), fabrication facilities, and existing test and development environments. It supports local robotics companies to advance the commercial readiness of their technologies, enabling them to scale and create global businesses that access international markets, by providing resources to strengthen service delivery as well as support and advisory services. The factory concept draws on knowledge from similar initiatives in both Europe and the US, but with a focus on field robotics, where we have a global leadership position. Implementation of the concept will increase our sovereign capability in the development and commercialisation of robotic technologies, increase jobs (particularly in regional areas), provide meaningful career pathways for mechatronics graduates and also increase exports.

Advancing Technology through National Challenges

Challenges can increase the effectiveness of technology development and diffusion by fast-tracking delivery of aspirational goals that are currently technically impossible to achieve. We propose that the creation of a series of Australian challenges, to be solved by the robotics and broader communities, will fast track development of technologies. The challenges will need to focus on pressing national issues, stimulate collaboration and spark the public’s imagination of the possibilities these new technologies present. Challenges will also help to test robotics technologies in different settings within Australia and help to establish regulation ahead of market penetration of new technologies.

Each day we will post another segment from the Submission to the National Robotics Strategy made by Robotics Australia Group after extensive consultation with Australia's robotics ecosystem.

About Robotics Australia Group

Robotics Australia Group is Australia’s peak body for the Australian robotics (and robotics-related) technology sector with a network of more than 5,000 and an international alliance with similar organisations in other countries. Our goal is to build a sustainable robotics industry by supporting the entire robotics ecosystem, from the companies building robots to those researching and developing new robotic technologies, robotics educators and enthusiasts, and the companies looking to adopt robots and robotics-related technologies. Our members and partners include large and small companies that create or adopt robotics technologies.

We have a lot of momentum to build on and we look forward to continuing to work with you. If you would like to support the work that we are doing?please consider joining as a Friend, Member or Sponsor.