5 factors will impact robotics in Australia over the next 2-5 years.

For people starting their career, thinking about a career shift or just starting a new business, you just can't afford to spend 2 years getting good at something for it to become irrelevant.

Here are 5 factors I think will impact you over the next 2-5 years:

Factor 1. Large Mining Companies Automation

For the last 20 years there has been growing investment by large Australian mining companies in Autonomous Trucks. But looking forward I don't see this growing much more, the big companies have already bought the trucks they need, and won't be doing more big upgrades. Autonomous Trucks is mature but not growing for large mining companies.

Factor 2. Small Mining Companies Automation

For the smaller mining companies, they are still doing a lot of non autonomous driving. This will probably continue in the future, as the benefits of autonomous vehicles are only apparent when you can increase the precision of mining. If you just make things autonomous it's not usually that valuable.

So I see the overall mining automation space is probably not going to grow. It won't shrink but we're not going to see the explosion we've seen previously.

Factor 3. Investment in humanoid robotics.

Humanoid robots are receiving huge global investment. Although right now they don't seem too useful, every day cheaper robots that can do better things are coming out. How Australian industries adapt to use humanoid robotics, and deal with their limitations will be an interesting growth area. You can already buy a humanoid robot for $40k AUD, so it's entering the realm where it may be viable if they can solve simple tasks.

Factor 4: Visual Language Action Models

A new way of building the brains for robots has been discovered. Called a Visual Language Action Model, these networks allow a robot to combine visual reasoning, text inputs like chat and motor control to allow for complex control. Right now these are caught up in the mess of tech downstream of LLM's, but in a 2-5 year horizon I think these could turn out to be the big breakthrough. Imagine a robot arm that you could just speak to and have it start doing a task for you.

Factor 5: Manufacturing in Australia

High energy costs and low manufacturing in Australia. Despite the hype it seems that Australia isn't investing in building its manufacturing base, so much of the benefits of these automation technologies might not be able to be captured by Australian industry.

Ultimately it's probably a safe bet to invest in mining automation if you're Australian. However I don't think it's going to experience huge growth. I think that the humanoid robotics and VLA technology is a current wave that anyone can jump on, but the tricky part for Australians will be finding the valuable things to use them for.

If you're a manufacturer in Australia, you'll likely have to adopt more automation just to stay ahead of the global wave that is coming.