Australia’s leading manufacturing robotics hub is hunting the nation’s most promising startups and innovators for a unique opportunity to link up with the world’s best researchers and industry in Boston.
The Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Hub sprint program has been dubbed Propel-AIR and will be launched by Industry minister Ed Husic on Thursday in Queensland.
It comes through joint federal and industry funding and will run for six months from January, eventually spotlighting ten finalists and awarding one winner a year-long residency at leading global hub Mass Robotics in Boston.
The area is considered the centre of the robotics universe, with state-of-the-art facilities, institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leading companies like Boston Dynamics and the robotics headquarters of global giants like Amazon.
The grand prize includes up to one month on the ground in Boston and an opportunity to pitch at RoboBusiness in Silicon Valley later in 2025. Finalists will also receive support from the ARM Hub.
Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Hub chief Cori Stewart said the winner will gain a crucial connection and view of the global market that can be leveraged back home.
“We really need this capability to service local industry and make sure that our industries can grow and thrive so we can be more productive,” Ms Stewart said.
“But given its nascent, we think it’s really the right opportunity to hold the sprint, bring attention to what people are doing, connect it with the industry locally and then… they really need to be able to go global with their innovation.”
Australian robotics companies climbed 50 per cent in value in the three years to 2021 to $18 billion, according to the National Robotics Strategy launched earlier this year.
But dispersing the technology more widely is tipped to be a boon for the changing national economy, with the potential to add a further $170-$600 billion per year to GDP by 2030, according to modelling by McKinsey cited in the national plan.
Ms Stewart says Australia has produced some of the world’s best robotics and automation capabilities in the world, including much of the innovation behind driverless mining trucks. But too often it has being foreign firms commercialising it and reaping the most rewards.
Adoption more widely in other industries is also lacking she said, with Australia “one of the slowest developed countries at implementing robotics and automation”.
“It’s a huge unmet opportunity for Australian industry to be more productive,” Ms Stewart told InnovationAus.com
“It’s a huge opportunity for us to be able to create new and novel and high value goods, which we probably were good at, but we could do more of with automation and smart robotics.
“And if we really want to realize that across our priority areas and our economy, there’s no other way to do it, so we really need to do that, and it’s urgent.”
The national robotics strategy was launched by Mr Husic in May this year and sets lofty goals to crank up adoption and turn a fledgling local industry into a thriving exporter that competes with automation powerhouses like Germany and Japan.
But the strategy did not come with dedicated funding.
The Propel-AIR sprint comes thanks to the Albanese government’s artificial intelligence package that awarded the ARM Hub $5 million to set up an AI adoption service for businesses.
Partners are contributing anther $6 million to the AI and robotics effort at ARM Hub, which is also providing a data and AI as a service option. The additional service is aimed at manufacturers and industrial tech companies to add Microsoft and Databricks cloud storage and analytics with established governance controls and security.
Ms Stewart said the hub will look to run the sprint again in future years to create an ongoing opportunity for local robotics companies.
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