INTHEBLACK October 2026 - Magazine - Page 47
“Robots do not cost A$250,000 anymore. They cost
A$25,000, and when a robot costs A$25,000, it is more
palatable as an investment. We are seeing these robots
turn up in lots of different places, and businesses are
trying them out and seeing how they fit into a workflow.”
DAVID HOWARD, CSIRO
CHINA’S ROBOT
REVOLUTION
While Australia is building robotics
credentials in field and remote
environments, China is pursuing an
altogether different scale of ambition.
In 2025, the country had more
than 140 domestic humanoid robot
manufacturers and released over
330 humanoid models — figures that
reflect not just industrial capacity,
but a wider national strategy.
Beijing has made embodied AI
a centrepiece of its 15th Five-Year Plan
(2026–2030), with targets including
100,000 humanoid robots deployed
domestically by 2027.
Government-backed training
facilities — the largest spanning
more than 10,000 square metres in
Shijingshan District, Beijing — are
generating millions of data points
annually to accelerate development.
Meanwhile, price points are collapsing:
Unitree’s R1 humanoid launched in
mid-2025 at US$5900 (A$8527),
a threshold analysts consider the
commercial tipping point.
Of the more than 12,000 humanoid
robots shipped in 2025, Chinese
companies AgiBot and Unitree each
shipped over 5000. For Australian
businesses and their finance teams
weighing robotics investment
decisions, China’s trajectory is worth
watching — not just as a competitor,
but as a signal of how quickly the
economics of robotics can shift.
model and so it needs to be considered
more strategically,” she says.
Regarding finance and accounting
systems, there is currently a shift to robotic
process automation (RPA), which combines
application programming interfaces with
user interactions.
“Historically, the problem with RPA
has been reliability — specifically when
something unexpected occurs during
processing that was not pre-programmed,”
says Guy Ioppolo FCPA, director at
iaAutomate and chair of CPA Australia’s
Digital Transformation Centre of Excellence.
“That interactivity between robotic process
automation and AI is extremely powerful.
Many of these ‘unexpected events’ are now
handled by AI agents.
“One way to think about it is that robots
are the hands and feet, and AI is the brain,
just like a physical robot, eliminating the
need to reprogram for every unexpected
event that is encountered.”
INCREASE UPTAKE
Areas where Australia has a competitive
advantage — in field robotics and robotics
for remote, high-risk environments for
example — may be the starting point from
which to build the Australian robotics sector.
“Australia’s strength is not in trying
to out-manufacture the world,” Maqbool
states. “If we can solve robotics for remote
mines, solar farms and construction sites,
we improve productivity and create products,
services and expertise other countries need.
“We have strong robotics expertise,
renowned academic institutions and
capability in field robotics, but we risk
missing opportunities because of weak
commercialisation pathways and immature
local supply chains,” she says.
Nevertheless, Australia’s ecosystem
is growing, with more robotics and AI
companies starting up.
“We are seeing more venture capital
intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au 47
