Australian Robotics Roadmap Review: A Startup Perspective | by Jason Carr | May, 2024

The Australian Department of Industry Science and Resources just released the inaugural National Robotics Strategy. In his opening statement Minister Ed Husic MP (the Minister for Industry and Science) stated that “Australia’s manufacturing industry has shrunk more than any other sector in our economy”. Also, “that a 1% increase in robotics can lead to a 0.8% increase in productivity”. The roadmap sets a vision to develop and adopt our robotics solutions to secure Australia’s future.

Ok great. To be clear, I am a cofounder of a Robotics as a Service startup called Arbiter focussed on automating mobile security patrols for remote sites initially targeting the mining and defence industries. We are currently looking to raise deep tech seed funding over the coming months, and we will be inviting investor groups shortly for demonstration…So I have a few perspectives take them or leave them.

Our challenge, and I cherry picked this comment from the strategy: “Attracting early-stage and long-term capital are barriers because of the upfront expense of robotics and automation hardware.” Also, “growing a sustainable robotics ecosystem will depend on the success of Australia’s robotics and automation R&D and commercialising these technology”.

Related to this, our hypothesis, and questions when we began building Arbiter from scratch included:

• Does Robotics have to be hard? because everyone keeps telling us that…
• Can we tap into the talented student base of Australia’s best universities to use their project work to help guide the development of our robot through internships?
• Can we build a lean robotics startup?
• Has technology lowered the barrier and cost of entry enough that we can pick up much of what we need off the shelf or use advanced manufacturing techniques to create a cost competitive and compelling offering?

The answer to the above is a resounding yes (lots of stories behind each)! BUT, we shouldn’t have to be like Tony Stark building this in a cave from a box of scraps. Because frankly… That was our experience. We have our prototype but where was the funding and support? Now there have been a few highlights for us. I must mention a huge positive shoutout to our partners Moonshot Houston , UTS Startups, Microsoft for Startups, and the NVIDIA Inception Program. So as a cofounder my personal response to the technology roadmap.

• Enough with the government “co-funded grants”. The bright sparks at universities have great ideas and so many of them could be commercialised right now but guess what… students don’t have money to co-fund anything! Unless they want to join the queue at the nearest VC and lose a big chunk of their equity (and more importantly motivation) way too early! By the way, most VC’s in Australia don’t have the ability to do due diligence on robotics anyway.
• You want to know who to fund? Just talk to Robotics Australia Group . Few organisations have their ear closer to the ground than them, and they are truly networking with robotics startups at a grassroots level.
• Government funding…what is going on here? They just put $1 billion into the quantum startup PsiQuantum. Now all power to you Psi Quantum I don’t doubt the importance of quantum, in fact I am very excited. BUT from my conversation the deal just pissed off nearly-every scientist, engineer and entrepreneur in Australia. And why are they mad? because investments in STEM/STEAM is completely underfunded in this country. For that amount you could have funded the entire Australian Space Agency, all the rocket launch sites and have provided Seed funding to every decent robotics startup in Australia. I mean according to the media the cost of Snowy Hydro 2.0 just blew out to $12 billion. What are we doing? Heck let’s be bold and invest in quantum, robotics, and space ten times over! If this country is worried about productivity, I quote you again “that a 1% increase in robotics can lead to a 0.8% increase in productivity”.
• Most startup robotics companies don’t need as much as you think. Most teams only need a team of 5–10 people and $1M-$2M to operate for a couple of years once they have their prototype. This is used to engage with industry for trials, onsite deployment, and local scaling. Do this well with an experienced team and you could break even within this time and make a decent scalable profit. Shock!

Australia, we’ve been losing our manufacturing base and bright science and technology startups overseas for decades. Robotics seems like a fantastic opportunity to start again without bearing the burden of massive corporate transformation. Let’s get smart and fund our best and brightest. Let’s get to work rebuilding our declining manufacturing space.