Australian robotics adoption: where does it stand and why does it matter?

It's not a perfect measure, but unit sales of industrial robots give some idea of a country's industrial might. The names of the top five buyers in 2017 – China, Japan, South Korea, the US and Germany – shouldn't be too surprising. The global average is 74 per 10,000. One factor in this is the small electronics and automotive sectors here, which are two major drivers of industrial robot investment. The high number of SME and micro-businesses in Australian manufacturing is another.