Our second episode of Season 2 features Sue Keay. Sue is currently the robotics technology lead at OZ Minerals, Chair and Founder of Robotics Australia Group, and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the National Robotics Strategy (amongst many other accomplishments). Sue joined us for a chat shortly before the Department of Industry, Science and Resources released its National Robotics Strategy discussion paper – which she had a hand in shaping – and shared with us the many challenges and opportunities she sees for the future of robotics in Australia.
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Episode credits
Guest: Sue Keay
Hosts: Zena Assaad and Liz Williams
Producers: Robbie Slape, Zena Assaad, Liz Williams, and Martin Franklin
Transcript
Liz: Hi everyone, I’m Liz Williams.
Zena: And I’m Zena Assaad.
And this is season two of the Algorithmic Futures Podcast.
Liz: Join us as we talk to technology creators, regulators and dreamers from around the world to learn how complex technologies may shape our environment and societies in the years to come.
…
Zena:
In this episode, we’re joined by Sue Key. Sue is the Chair of Robotics Australia Group and she’s on the Advisory Committee for the National Robotics Strategy. She also founded the Robotics Australia Group and has led the development of Australia’s robotics roadmaps, which outline how robotics and automation will impact different sectors of the Australian economy.
Liz:
As the robotics industry continues to grow and diversify around the world, we will continue to see robotic applications transforming different sectors. While Australia continues to succeed in research and training robotics specialists, and excels in some fields, are we doing enough to support the industry locally? We’ll take a closer look at the opportunities and challenges that this country faces to catalyse this sector.
Zena:
Sue is currently the robotics technology lead at OZ Minerals, and has also held previous roles as CEO of Queensland AI Hub, Research Director for Cyber-Physical Systems at CSIRO’s Data61, and Chief Operating Officer for the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. She also serves on the Boards of the CRC for Optimising Resource Extraction and CAST Services.
Liz:
As you’ll hear in this episode, Sue is an expert in emerging technologies and is passionate about developing new technology industries in Australia, particularly those involving robotics. We’re very happy that Sue has been able to join us today.
Zena:
Hi, Sue. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.
Sue:
Oh, thanks. It’s great to be here.
Liz:
We usually start these things with a question about your background. We would love to know something about where you’re from, what your early influences are, and what led you to robotics.
Sue:
Well, I like to describe my career as non-linear because that sounds better than disorganized, but a lot of people comment that I have an unusual career pathway. When I was growing up, I was really fortunate to grow up in a privileged household where we always had access to the latest technology, and I have quite vivid memories of being the first house in the street to get a personal computer and our neighbors actually lining up at the door to come and have a look at this miraculous thing.
And I was always surrounded by technology, but perhaps not interested so much in the technology itself as opposed to finding it a useful tool. And because I think I grew up in a household where there was an acceptance of experimentation and looking at new ways of doing things, indeed my mom actually taught herself how to code in COBOL, the language that was started by Admiral Grace Hopper. Her specialty was in the archives and she could see a lot of ways that this new computing world would make changes. I think she was a bit ahead of her time in that respect.
I actually had quite a break between school and university. And then when I did decide to go back to university, I was very indecisive about what I would do. I think I had actually signed up for accounting and then at the very last minute I changed my enrollment to science. I was looking for something more creative. And because I’m not blessed with the creative instincts of people who would be on the stage or screen or able to make beautiful paintings, for whatever reason, I felt science actually had that creative aspect to it.
I was lucky when I was at university to really find my passion there in geology of all things. The only reason that I had taken geology was because my dad taught physics at that particular university and I was looking for a science subject that wasn’t physics. I followed that passion for geology for quite some time. So I did my PhD in earth sciences, I moved down to Canberra and studied at the Australian National University. I then moved up to Queensland to do a post-doctoral research fellow specializing in isotope geochemistry.
And then for a variety of reasons, I found that I had to leave my research career, and that was pretty crushing and soul-destroying at the time. I really had to rethink what it is that I could do, what I had to offer and found myself progressively moving from science communication more into research management and then eventually into research commercialization. And so I followed that and it kind of then led me through an interesting pathway to the point where I noticed that there was an opportunity to help set up the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, which was a new Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence that was being formed at QUT in Brisbane. They were looking for a chief operating officer.
I really didn’t know much about robotics at the time — this was back in 2014. But my sister had been in the field of robotics for some time. She was, and currently still is, the managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics over in the US. And so for many years she’d been telling the whole family that robotics was the way of the future and that we really should get on board, and I’m the younger sister, so I took it as my duty to ignore everything that my older sister said so I really hadn’t paid a lot of attention. But then when this opportunity came up, she was the first person that I contacted and I just asked her opinion and she thought I’d be crazy not to take it on board.
That really was my first introduction into really being more on the technology side of things rather than more in the physical or social sciences, and I just found the entire experience fascinating. Every day I was walking into a robotics lab seeing what the robots were capable of. I just had this overwhelming feeling that the rest of the world really didn’t know much about this universe and what the potential was and how it could really change the way we do so many different things, and that we really were only limited by our imagination in the impact that these technologies could have. I guess probably since that time I’ve had a drive to, one, try and help people get an understanding of these technologies and what they might mean for the future, but also a real passion for the industry itself.
Zena:
You’ve kind of spoken about the different paths that you’ve taken and then you also spoke about the different industries that robotics currently spans and you have to work across those industries. So what have been some of the challenges in not only communicating across those different industries in a general sense, but also trying to communicate your own skills and expertise and why you are the correct person to be in a position to talk across disciplines?
Sue:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I guess as I am in the area longer, I probably face less questioning about my right to have an opinion. But perhaps when I was fairly new, then I certainly felt that quite keenly. I mean, just as a very simple example, I actually felt very intimidated about – we have a very active women in technology group up here in Brisbane. I felt too intimidated to go for many years because I didn’t feel that I was really a woman in technology because I didn’t have a computer science degree, I didn’t go through that traditional pathway. I wasn’t doing coding myself. So I felt like a complete imposter.
I tend to get that less now and that I presume is hopefully because people have found that I have some useful stuff to say. And so there is less of that. I guess I’m pretty clear about what I’m good at and what I’m not. I’m not the sort of person that you would actually get to program your robot, but I am the sort of person that could be quite useful in thinking about how that might change your business and what some of the challenges of implementation are.
Certainly I think that does look different depending on what sector you are in. For example, we’ve really had industrial robots in manufacturing for almost 70 years now. It was back in the 1960s where car manufacturing plants were first experimenting with robots, and yet there is a whole new class of robots, the robots that Australia is actually good at called field robots, which actually have a lot more applicability and flexibility than those industrial robots. They’ve probably only been out and about for 20 to 30 years and certainly haven’t got a lot of penetration in many sectors. And so it’s quite a different kettle of fish how I think you would look at robotics if you’re in the manufacturing sector compared to how you would look at robotics in other sectors where we’re increasingly seeing robots have an influence such as defense, mining, agriculture. Even construction’s starting to see more impact of robotics, and also a lot of users in just environmental applications.
I think it probably also helps that there is such a dearth of resources in telling people how to go about tackling this challenge of coping with these new technologies. I think that is really an area where a lot more attention could be paid. One thing that keeps me awake at night is workforce planning and how we really are gearing people up and giving them the skills that they require to be able to adapt and make the most of these opportunities. Because while I, perhaps because of my background, see nothing but opportunities, for a lot of other people, they find the whole notion of having more robots out in the world very challenging, challenging to their identity, challenging to their potential future job security. There really is a high degree of fear about the prospect, which is dissimilar to nearly every other technology.
Unfortunately, not many people have experience with robots on a day-to-day basis that might challenge some of those fictional notions of robots or artificial intelligence taking over the world because anyone who has had that opportunity to work in a robotics lab for any period of time would know that robots are actually frustratingly not useful a lot of the time. And to envisage a future where they could actually be doing some really useful clever things is fantastic. But some of the immediate fears that people have, that these technologies will take over their jobs anytime soon are probably misplaced. Certainly it will change the jobs of the future. But will we have less jobs? I don’t know that anyone’s seriously predicting that anymore.
Zena:
I agree. I think there’s something to be said about the narrative around robotics and autonomous systems. I think often the narrative is quite optimistic about what they are and are not capable of, and I think bringing some accuracy and reality to that narrative will probably help with adoption.
Sue:
Yes, I agree. I mean, one thing that I found very frustrating in my current role, which is around trying to accelerate the implementation of robotics and automation, has been in looking for resources that we could point our workforce to to help alleviate some of those fears. There’s really not a lot available. Whereas if you look at a field like data science, if you go online, there are thousands, literally thousands of courses, many of them free, that would give you a sense of, “What is this data science? Would I be any good at it?” You could train yourself up to be a data scientist with a lot of this online material if you were motivated to do so. But there are no resources like that in the sort of robotics automation space. There’s nothing even that gives people a sense of, “What will my work look like? What is it like to work in an autonomous environment?”
The closest that we have is some training material on what it’s like to work in a remote operations center, but that’s pretty specific to the mining industry. And as I said, this is not really giving people a good sense of how their lives might be impacted and what sort of things they could be doing to make sure that they’re going to be able to take advantage of these opportunities in the future.
Liz:
I want to explore this idea of what pathways do we actually need to open up to help people envision what a future where robotics is much more integrated into how we work. But I’m wondering if maybe we can talk about the current Australian landscape in this space and where you think that it might be going. What at least from your perspective is the trajectory or possible trajectories of this landscape?
Sue:
Well, I think Australia is blessed with a lot of potential and opportunity in as much as we produce a lot of really good talent and technologies in the field robotics space. And at the moment, I don’t believe we are taking sufficient advantage of that with the notable exception of Defense, which has recognized that having that sovereign capability and actually having Australians that know stuff about autonomous machines is very important. But I think that unfortunately what we’ve seen is that a lot of that opportunity is not coming to fruition because people leave Australia to pursue opportunities overseas because the commercial reality is that it’s often much easier to set up a robotics company overseas than it is here in Australia. I find that frustrating and I’d like to see that there’s more opportunity because until we see that opportunity realized, then we’re not going to see more robots out and about in everybody’s everyday environment. And to me, that’s actually the key.
When I have seen robot experiments where, for example, a robot has been introduced in a hospital environment, the thing that really tends to happen when people can be hands on with the technology is that obviously the people that create these technologies are specialists in robots. They’re not specialists in the sectors that they’re necessarily designing the robot for. And it’s not until the robot gets out into that sector and the people who are the domain specialists get their hands on it and get an understanding of the limitations, but also the capabilities of those machines that you really, I think, start to see the magic happening.
So in the example of a robot in a hospital, what ended up happening were that a lot of the people working in the hospital who at first were very skeptical and quite concerned about having a robot in their environment, when they first met the robot, realized, “Well, it’s not going to replace any of their jobs anytime soon,” but it could actually help them do their jobs, but help them do their jobs in different ways that were never even thought about by the people who had put the robot together. I think that’s where we would really start to see a big step change in the speed with which we can implement the technologies, but also in that whole idea of people feeling comfortable with the technology as well.
Liz:
So it sounds like these cross-disciplinary or cross-sector collaborations are sort of sparks for enabling this kind of, not just collaboration, but also the creation process that would be involved in creating a robot that is built for purpose. Are those the kinds of spaces where you’re seeing these opportunities kind of blossom?
Sue:
Anywhere where there has been an investment in building prototypes that are relevant to the area—so in particular, I’m thinking of Defense where they’ve been putting out challenges that have actually meant that some of our robotics companies have discovered that to meet these challenges, they actually have to work with some of the other companies in the area because they might specialize in one component that could solve the problem but not the full area. And then once people have built those demonstrator projects, then I think it just opens up a whole range of opportunities. But what we’re still not very good at is getting that information from one sector and seeing how it applies across different sectors.
So personally, I try and keep an eye across as many sectors as I can, but I think it’s a real challenge because if you’re in construction, then you’re likely to go to a construction conference, you’re not likely to go to a mining conference. And yet really where a lot of opportunities could lie is in particular for mining, where traditionally we’ve built very big pieces of machinery to maximize the utility of the operator. So if you go and have a driver driving a truck, you get them to drive the biggest truck they possibly can. But if you don’t have a driver in the truck, then you can actually look at completely different way of doing things, perhaps with a swarm of smaller robots. That’s the area where construction could potentially be taking a lead.
And so that crossover of knowledge between those two sectors, it would be really good to find ways that we can see that happening more often.
Liz:
Is there a role at all for educational institutions to start helping these connections get made?
Sue:
Oh, I think so. I think one of the issues that is very pertinent in robotics, perhaps more so than many other areas of technology is the lack of diversity. And so because it is not a very gender diverse area, I think there’s probably a whole range of sectors that potentially don’t get a lot of attention in terms of the development of the technologies. And so just as we see that there tends to be often a congregation of women engineers in certain application areas such as biomedicine, I think that if you could really demonstrate the applicability of robotics across a whole range of sectors, you probably go a long way to increasing diversity within the field. And then we would probably see more biomedical robots than we currently do today. It would lead to a whole range of changes, I think, to the types of problems that robots are being used to solve.
Zena:
I think it’s also about understanding that working with robotics or just working in technology in general is broader than building and developing. This was kind of a comment you made earlier about feeling like an imposter because you weren’t coding and you weren’t actually building anything. But I’m an engineer and I’m not what’s called a tinkering engineer. I also don’t build anything and I also don’t code, but I work at the implementation phase, so I develop safety management frameworks. I’m very much like a systems engineer. And so I think there’s something to be said about when we talk about people who work in this space, it extends so much further than the people who are just at the development—not just. I’m not diminishing that role. It’s an incredibly important role. But the industry itself extends so much further. And I think shedding some light and awareness on that will also help with the diversity conversation as well, because I think a lot of the diversity sits outside of that kind of siloed area.
Sue:
Yeah. Well, I think skipping ahead a bit to the idea of who can contribute in robotics or how do you find a pathway into robotics then obviously I don’t think we can have enough mechatronics engineers. We can’t have enough electrical trades people who have a specialization in control. We just do not have enough of those people at the moment. But you don’t have to be an engineer or a tradesperson to have an impact in robotics. It’s actually extremely important that we have people from the legal side, from the design side, from the social sciences, from a whole range. I mean sales, marketing, all of these components are extremely important in helping us to create a sustainable robotics industry here in Australia. And so I think there are an enormous number of pathways. And finding ways that we can make sure that knowledge is imparted in the development of robotics is very important.
Zena:
So Sue, you are a member of the Kingston AI Group and you’re also the chair of the Robotics Australia Group board. Can you tell us a little bit more about what these roles involve?
Sue:
Yes. So both of these roles are really about raising the profile of robotics and artificial intelligence in Australia and highlighting the important opportunities that we could have and suggesting that these actually probably need a little bit of love and attention.
So the Kingston AI Group has formed as a response to Australia’s low investment in the area of artificial intelligence. Robotics Australia Group formed because there was a recognition that the industry was immature, fragmented, and invisible. A lot of people didn’t even know that we make robots in Australia. And so really both of those activities are about trying to overcome those problems so that we can overcome this issue where we have a great track record in Australia of developing talent and technologies, but we are not actually reaping the rewards of that creation because unfortunately, a lot of people end up moving overseas to take up better opportunities. We would like to see an environment here where people can pursue that technology development and continue to develop talent here in Australia rather than seeing it have to leave and go overseas.
Obviously, it’s great for people to get overseas experience. There’s absolutely no reason people shouldn’t do that, but it is disappointing if they then find that it doesn’t make sense to create a company here in Australia and they feel forced to do so overseas.
Liz:
What are some of the challenges that people often face in trying to start an organization or even grow in organization focused on robotics in Australia?
Sue:
Yeah. Well, it’s not just in Australia. I mean, the rest of the world has had this issue as well, but in Australia we haven’t quite caught up. And that is the issue around getting venture capital funding. And so for startups in the software space, it’s been traditionally easier to get funding than robotics. It’s a cliche that people often say, “Hardware is hard.” That is a real problem with getting funding for robotics because it’s hardware and software. People tend to understand the risks involved in developing software, but less enthusiastic about taking the risks involved with developing hardware because it’s more capital intensive.
However, what we’ve seen in other countries is that they have tackled this problem head on often with a lot of government support. So in countries where they have really clearly articulated artificial intelligence and robotics strategies and they’re investing towards making those happen, you’re seeing a much higher levels of investment from the private sector and also just a lot more support for companies to grow and scale, which again is another issue in Australia.
So I think compared to other countries at the moment, where Australia is falling behind is in the difficulty that people have in accessing capital to start and grow their businesses, and then also in the mentoring and support to understand how to scale those businesses successfully. So I’m really looking forward to the time when we get our first robotics unicorn in Australia. I think that will really be a turning point for us. I think we have a lot of potential to get there. It’s just unfortunately so many companies leave our shores before they get that opportunity to get there. And then once they leave our shores, we treat them like they’re dead to us even though they might have Australian founders because they’re no longer Australian companies. So unfortunately, that opportunity gets missed.
Liz:
Some of our listeners might not know what a unicorn is. Can you explain that briefly?
Sue:
Yeah. That is a company that has a market capitalization value of over a billion dollars. They’re called unicorns.
Liz:
This might be a good opportunity to talk about the work you’ve been doing on the Robotics Roadmaps. Can you explain what they are and what they’re seeking to achieve and what your role has been in developing those?
Sue:
Yeah. So the first Robotics Roadmap we released in 2018, and that was part of my role at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. I put forward the idea that Australia really needed to have one of these and that the center was probably in the best position to be able to lead the development of that roadmap. What I had noticed when I was working at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision was yes, it was this cornucopia of magnificent robotic technologies being developed and we seemed to have a few linkages with industry and people would often talk about the different robotics companies that existed, but no one really had a clear picture of who they were, what they were doing, how we could more effectively engage with them because as you know in Australia, we have a real gap when it comes to translating our research into commercial success for a variety of reasons.
And I thought – one thing I noticed were that other countries often had already put together a Robotics Roadmap. And at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision at the time, we were very fortunate that one of the people on our advisory committee was Professor Henrik Christensen, who is now at the University of San Diego, who was, and still is, the main driving force behind the creation of the US Robotics Roadmaps. So I spent a fair bit of time annoying Henrik about how he went about putting that roadmap together. Henrik suggests that the second version of the Robotics Roadmap in the US actually led to more than $100 million worth of investment into robotics on the basis of them having put that together. So I thought, “Well, that sounds like something that is really well worth doing.” But the other, I guess more local aspect of it was just this frustration that we had no idea what the robotics capability really was in Australia. Like I said, people would know the odd company they could rattle off, but no one really knew who they were, how big they were, were they exporting, how many people were they employing.
And so the first Robotics Roadmap was an attempt to try and map that capability out. And based on that, we came to the conclusion that there are probably more than a thousand companies in Australia with robotics capability. So they may not be companies that call themselves robotics companies, but they might have an arm of the business that can either manufacture robots or certainly are very good at implementation. And then we believe that they employ more than 50,000 people, and that at time in 2018 that they were more worth more than $12 billion in revenue to the Australian economy. Now it’s really hard to get those figures because they’re not collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics so we had to use a range of sources. Obviously we did a lot of engagement – going out and talking to people.
And so that was our sort of best attempt at putting some boundaries – or definitions – around what the robotics industry was like in Australia. Obviously, the other important aspect is that Australia really is a country of field robotics. We don’t have companies that manufacture industrial robots in Australia. And it’s really important for that information to be pulled out because for the government to do any effective policy interventions, one, they need to understand the importance of the industry, but two, they also need to understand what the industry is. So by the time we’d finished that roadmap, we started to get a bit of traction. What we decided to do following that on, unfortunately the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision did not… It was limited funding, and so it did have to close down.
But in 2020, the Robotics Australia Group Board managed to get some seed funding from BHP and we created that as a not-for-profit to be the voice of the robotics industry in Australia because one of the things that had been recognized as a result of doing all of the roadmap consultations were this feeling that people had that there was all of this opportunity and potential in the robotics, but that it was being held back by being a fairly immature industry, fragmented, where people didn’t know what everyone else was doing and that it was invisible. And so we formed to try and overcome that issue. And then that led us to doing a 2022 version of the Robotics Roadmap.
And then the consultation proved much easier. People had already seen the first roadmap in many instances, very keen to get on board. So I think we had more than a thousand participants in the consultation for the second roadmap. I didn’t even ask for case studies after a while because they were just flowing in. I kind of felt a bit bad. We could have collected a whole stack more examples of the great work that’s being done here.
That seems to have had some impact because when the Australian government changed last year, then the new Minister for Industry, Science, and Resources instructed the department that he felt that robotics was important as an industry and that he wanted to see a national robotics strategy. And really that’s pretty much why Robotics Australia Group formed so that we could try and get that level of interest and support within the government. Not that government interest is the be all and end all. One of the key things that we are also trying to do is actually just make sure that we are helping to form those connections between different parts of the robotics ecosystem, so academia within industry so companies are aware of the services that each provide and find opportunities to collaborate and potentially scale.
Yeah, so the roadmap has done a lot towards what I think we had originally set out to achieve. And so now, unlike when we first put the roadmap together, one thing that also Australia didn’t have compared to other countries was an association that represented the robotics industry. So Robotics Australia Group fulfills that niche. I guess we’ve only been going, Robotics Australia Group, for two years, so hopefully we can actually start to see a lot more acceleration in terms of the maturity of the industry. I think the roadmaps have been pretty important though because I think until we started to try and articulate what the robotics industry looked like, then it was very hard for people to really do more than give anecdotal evidence.
Liz:
I wanted to explore a little bit the field robotics versus industrial robotics. I’m very interested in how context kind of shapes the development of technologies. I’m curious to hear how that focus on field robotics influences what the industry looks like here in Australia and maybe what that might mean in terms of some of the regulatory aspects or some of the industry incentives for bringing the field forward.
Sue:
Yeah. Well, it is actually one of the most difficult things that we find that needs to be explained about the characteristics of the Australian robotics industry because so many people, when they think of robotics, they only think of industrial robotics. And so we’ve even seen some state level government programs that purport to help the robotics industry by helping manufacturers to adopt robots without appreciating that if you incentivize companies in manufacturing to adopt robots, then they’ll be adopting robots from overseas.
So you’re not actually helping the robotics industry here in Australia. Whereas I guess a slightly more nuanced understanding of Australian robotics shows that, of course, it is really important. Australia is actually lagging behind in terms of adoption of automation technology in general. So it’s hugely important that in manufacturing, we encourage manufacturers to take on more robotics. But if you want to support the robotics industry, then it’s probably sectors such as defense, agriculture, mining, the environment, construction that are the… Logistics, transport and logistics, where you are going to at the same time also help us to support the talent and technologies that we have here in Australia in robotics.
Zena:
Sue, a lot of the work that I do or the research that I do is around the safety of robotics, autonomous systems, and AI. One of the things I’ve noticed working across different industries is the different risk appetites when implementing these systems. So certain industries will have larger or smaller risk thresholds for different things. And you kind of mentioned the mining sector and you mentioned then the medical sector, and I imagine that the risk threshold for the medical sector would be quite low, whereas for the mining sector, potentially it would be, by comparison, a bit greater. So using that as an example of some of the differences, what are some of the other challenges and opportunities that you’ve found across disciplines when you’re looking at the implementation of the adoption of robotics, specifically looking at it from a safety perspective, because I think that safety is one of the key motivators or even one of the key things that discourages people from adoption, right? Like the perception of what these systems will do once they’re implemented. So what have you found has been one of the challenges and the opportunities across those different industries?
Sue:
Yeah. Well, I think that with industrial robots, because they have been around for so much longer, there are well established international standards that people are familiar with and understand, whereas because field robotics has evolved more recently, it really is a mess. In the mining sector, even if you’re operating in different states, there are different levels of risk appetite and trying to keep on top of that—I actually don’t know how the OEMs, the original equipment manufacturers who do a lot of the large autonomous haul trucks, I don’t even know how they keep on top of it all. I mean, generally in mining, they take a functional safety perspective, but they then also have to make sure they meet with requirements and standards that often go across different boundaries. So it is very hard to find the exact standard that your particular robot in that sector has to meet. Whereas in manufacturing, presumably that must have been a bit of a mess for them in the early days as well, but that seems to be a bit forgotten now and they’re all on top of things.
But in the field robotics space, I think it’s a really problematic space because there are constant questions around what are the standards that actually apply to this particular machine? And so what are the requirements that we have to have? That leads people to take the most risk averse approach to implementation, which can often slow things down, whether that’s really strictly speaking necessary or not, because despite the fact that it might seem that mining would have a more risk tolerance compared to an area like medicine, in reality what happens is that we just work exactly like manufacturing except instead of cages around the robots, we just have exclusion zones. So no people can come anywhere near the robots. We are really not using the full capability of those systems if we continue to operate them that way. But until we have—and to your point Zena, it’s all around trust. And until we can have that trust in the system and I guess feel confident in the standards that are being applied, then I think we are going to see quite slow adoption and implementation of many of these technologies.
Liz:
Just a point of clarification for our listeners, what is a functional safety perspective? What does that look like in a mining environment, for example?
Sue:
I guess it’s where you have to put list your arguments around different aspects of the safety. So rather than having like a checklist that you can just go, “Yes, I’ve done this. Yes, I’ve done that,” it’s much more of an analysis of the safety requirements. And yeah, I mean it’s kind of quite a big industry really. People are in high demand who can consult on functional safety because it’s complex. It’s not something that’s black and white. You can’t just compare to a checklist. And unfortunately, that’s just kind of where things are at the moment, but perhaps that’s reasonable in a fairly immature evolving industry where people don’t have all the answers yet.
Liz:
Given that Australia is a place where these field robotics systems are being developed because of our environment and the needs in this place, is that an area where Australia seems to be leading in some sense in terms of the development of these systems, but also the deployment or experimentation even of deploying them?
Sue:
Yeah, definitely we were. A decade ago, we were clearly seen as the leaders in field robotics. I would feel less confident saying that we are nowadays. A lot of other countries have made big inroads in this space, particularly in areas like agricultural robotics. They’ve really been kind of cutting our grass. That’s a terrible pun in that respect.
Liz: I loved it.
Sue:
But at the end of the day, I think we haven’t lost the opportunity. We were very good at that. We are still good at that, but other people have started catching up. And the choice that faces us is pretty stark. It’s, are we going to be a technology maker or a technology taker? I think certainly a few years ago, it seemed to be government policy that technology was considered in economic terms to be a substitutable item, so meaning that it didn’t matter where you get it from you, what makes the most economic sense is to get it for the cheapest price. But I think that people are getting a much nuanced understanding since COVID and since the current geopolitical dynamics that technology is not just a commodity that you can buy from whoever you want whenever you want and there are definite reasons that you might want to be in charge of certain types of technology.
As our defense forces know very well, robotics is one of the top of the list because hardware Trojans are real and you can’t necessarily rely on being able to buy technology that you can trust from other countries.
Liz:
Are you able to define hardware Trojans for our listeners?
Sue:
Yeah. So people might have heard of software Trojans. They’re sort of things that are embedded in your software that can maybe take over your system, for example. It’s exactly the same with hardware. And with things like robots, then it’s really important to know where all of your components come from. I mean, I guess probably the best analogy for people to think about is Australia’s position on 5G and the fact that there are certain suppliers that the Australian government will not purchase from in the development of our 5G network because of the risk of hardware Trojans, because you can in-built into those networks things that would jeopardize our national security. It’s exactly the same with robots. You could have things in-built in those unless exactly where all of the components are sourced from and that they’re from trustworthy sources.
Zena:
You you are a member of the newly formed National Robotics Strategy Advisory Committee. Can you briefly explain to us your role within that committee and what the aims of the committee are?
Sue:
Yeah, so our aims as the committee are really just to help advise the department on the development of a national robotics strategy. My role and the role of the advisory committee has been the department has put together a consultation plan and a discussion paper so that they can go out to Australia and just say, “This is what we are thinking in terms of a robotic strategy, wanting to canvas people’s views, what are the key issues? What are the sorts of things where government can play a role?” And based on that, that will have a lot of an impact onto what that robotic strategy will end up looking like. So I’ve been encouraging as many people as I can to look out for the release of that discussion paper to be involved in any of the consultation meetings that the department puts together and really have a say. It could be a one-off opportunity or the opportunity of a lifetime to actually see some substantive change in the policy support in robotics in this country, which we’ve never seen before.
Liz:
And so where would you like to see this work heading in the near long term? Is there something that you would like to see grow out of this?
Sue:
I have been included on the committee as a representative of Robotics Australia Group. And so I am clearly going to be advocating for the views of the robotics industry as far as we can ascertain them. So there are a couple of things that we really would like to see, and those come in four key areas: that’s around how we grow the robotics industry, how we can attract and retain talent, how we can get some cohesion within the industry or within the ecosystem more broadly, and also how we can ensure that people feel included in the whole process.
I was using the term acceptance, but I’ve been warned that that kind of implies that it’s something that’s being thrust onto people that they have the choice of accepting or not and that’s kind of not really the nuance that we want. But I still haven’t quite come up with the right word that covers that – you might be able to help me out. But just to go to the growth side of things, I think as I’ve mentioned, certainly quite a few people in Australia believe that there’s a lot of potential in the robotics industry, but to actually see that develop, we really need some way to support high growth robotics companies forming here and to address some of the funding gaps that we know those companies currently face. And also to support them to be exporting because Australia is too small a market for us to grow a strong sustainable industry.
We also need to have a look at ways that we can incentivize the collaboration between large companies, government agencies, to partner, invest and nurture in a lot of our Australian robotics companies as they are trying to scale and develop fit for purpose solutions for those companies or for the government. In terms of talent, I mean, there is a war for talent across the whole world and we’re just part of that. But really to grow that pipeline of robotics talent by increasing the number of university and TAFE graduates, by diversifying the pathways into robotics and supporting the work placement and just in general helping develop more community literacy around robotics. We think those are very important.
Also, how we can collaborate with others to address a lot of the workforce challenges. So I’ve mentioned that one of the things that keeps me awake at night is around what I see is some of the pitfalls of our workforce planning and whether we actually are doing it, whether we actually have people in our HR and people teams in many companies who understand how to plan for a new technologically savvy workforce and how to support their existing workforce to get those talents and skills.
I mentioned that one of the things that was identified in the first Robotics Roadmap was this fragmentation of the industry – people operating separately, not necessarily at cross purposes, but not necessarily being aware of what else was happening. So we are really keen to see the development of clusters of activity so we can help to build the foundations of a sustainable robotics industry by supporting collaboration and making sure that we are seeing that knowledge transform the development of entrepreneurial culture. And definitely we need better linkages between Australia’s, I think, acknowledged strong research base in the area and with industry that’s perennial problem, but not one that I think can’t be overcome. And certainly that will have a lot of benefits in terms of bridging the commercialization gap that again is recognized not just for robotics, but for most technologies in Australia.
And then finally, what we can do to support—there’s just recently been an announcement about the formation of a national AI ethics network. I think what we also need is to make sure that the solutions that we’re developing in Australia in robotics are developed in ways that meet public expectations so that people feel comfortable with the technology and that essentially they’re consistent with Australian values. So those are the things that from the Robotics Australia Group point of view, we desperately want to see included in the strategy, but we are still in the consultation phase, so we are still kind of collecting some of our members’ views on that and what they see as ways that we can really start to lift the level of activity here in robotics in Australia. Because I mean, one of the benefits of Australia potentially being a bit slow off the mark in terms of developing a strategy when many other countries have had them for years now, is that we can actually look at other countries and see what has worked and what hasn’t and try and cherry-pick some of the good policy initiatives.
So if we are very clear about where we want to be in robotics and take the necessary steps to make it happen, I think we can do it. It’s just that we’ve never taken that step back and looked at where is it that we want to be, what is it that we want, and how do we get there.
Liz:
It sounds fascinating, also very challenging. But at the same time, it seems like a really wonderful opportunity for you and your colleagues to really shape what Australia’s future in this area looks like. Going back to the idea of inclusion and who ends up actually being part of making this future happen, I’m wondering how you were thinking about that in the context of how we set out a vision for Australia in this space—how we bring people from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, et cetera, into this. Because I know that that also plays into creating a so-called ethical industry.
Sue:
Well, I wish that there was a magic machine that would give us the answer to that question because I think if we were able to solve that in robotics, then I think clearly we’d be solving that across the entire tech industry. I mean, it really is a perennial challenge. I mean, there is a whole task force at the moment having a look at STEM programs that encourage diversity, and I think the sad reality is that what the government has found in the past is that they’ve invested quite a lot into these programs, but not necessarily seen the diversity outcomes that they would’ve liked to have seen.
I mean, it’s one thing to have a look at, are we investing money in the right places to see that increase in diversity, but at the end of the day, it is a societal issue. In Australia in particular, we seem to have a very gendered perspective on who does what work. We even have a gender pay gap in children’s pocket money based on the type of work that kids do. There was a really interesting study done by the University of Queensland Business School on this. It’s not that people deliberately pay their daughters less pocket money, but what they tend to do is they pay them on the basis of the type of chores that they do. So stacking the dishwasher doesn’t earn you as much money as mowing the lawn. And what you tend to notice though is that the tasks that earn more money tend to be the tasks that the boys in the household are asked to do.
So in Australia, we expect boys, men to do outside work. We encourage girls to do inside work. And when you think about that just on the pocket money scale, it actually kind of sums up the structural inequalities across the whole economy because we pay mainly men lots of money to do fly and fly out work at mine sites. And women, we don’t tend to encourage to do that work. And so they earn less money as nurses, teachers, think of whatever occupation. So I mean, really, unfortunately, I think the diversification of technology reflects some very deep-seated societal and cultural values that are going to be very difficult to shift. I’m hoping that maybe something that will come out of this task force is a recognition that we need to be addressing this from when kids are really young, but that it is a societal issue.
I get very frustrated at programs particularly that use the word encourage or talk about how perhaps women choose not to enter different fields when the reality is if you’ve been told from when you’re a baby that those fields are not for you, you’ve never seen any images that suggest that there are women working in them, how is it your choice not to go into that area? You’ve been brainwashed from a young age that you are not welcome. So like I said, I wish I had a magic machine that did have the answer to that. It feels sometimes like an intractable problem, but we’ve got to try and solve it.
Liz:
One of the things we usually ask people is if there’s anything that you wanted to share that we didn’t cover thus far.
Sue:
I mean, I think we’ve covered off on quite a lot. I think despite ending on maybe a bit of a negative note, because certainly I think we need to support any women who are considering a career in robotics, I mean, think that sexism exists everywhere. While when you are in a very male dominated field, perhaps it might feel a little bit closer to home, you’re not protected from it anywhere.
So I would like to see a future where perhaps women, and particularly girls, become more activists in this area because I think we really do run the risk of missing out on a whole range of technologies being developed that actually meet women’s needs by virtue of not having sufficient diversity in the field. I think if we could just give girls a bit of a taste of those opportunities and how they could really make a difference in the world if they were to take on the challenge of moving into these male-dominated arenas and actually just demanding a seat at the table, we would be in a good place. Because I think if we sit back and just continue to wait to be asked to the table, we’re going to be waiting a long time.
So I don’t really want to be giving a burden to the younger generation. I feel very bad that as a member of the older generation, I’ve been unsuccessful at kind of turning the dial very much on this. But I really think it has almost gotten to that point where we need to start demanding diversity in these fields because to my mind, they are so important. They will impact on everybody’s lives and in ways that I think we can’t even predict at this point. But certainly in some of the key societal challenges that we have, things like domestic violence, we know that technology deployed in the right way could actually lead to significant improvements in areas like that and be used to protect people. But it is all just a matter of where we choose to invest our time and energy. And yeah, I really hope that we can do a better job over the next couple of decades at improving diversity than we’ve done to date.
Liz:
I appreciate your willingness to share some of the imposter syndrome, et cetera, that you have felt, which I know many women who have entered some of these fields that are not necessarily traditional for women to enter, myself included, I think that’s something that we all experience. And knowing that that is actually normal and that shouldn’t keep us from sitting at the table and participating as an equal, I think that’s helpful. Having these conversations are helpful and knowing that it is normal to face some of these challenges. Hopefully, it will become less normal over time, but for now it is normal and part of it. But we have the capacity to contribute really uniquely and in important ways to these areas. Anyway, sorry, that’s my rant for the day.
Sue:
No, I completely agree, Liz.
Liz:
Did you want to leave anybody with any final words of advice if they’re considering entering robotics or in any of the areas that might be important for encouraging robotics in Australia? Or do you have any advice for anyone who’s listening, who’s considering these kinds of pathways?
Sue:
Yeah, I think just have self-belief and stick to your guns and persevere because opportunities are there. And if you know some doors don’t open for you, don’t stop knocking on doors. There are definitely opportunities there.
Zena:
I think that’s a really nice note to end on.
Liz:
Definitely. Thank you so much. It’s been an awesome interview.
Sue:
Oh, no. Thanks Liz. Thanks, Zena. And I really enjoyed it.
Liz: Thank you for joining us today on the Algorithmic Futures podcast. To learn more about the podcast and our guests you can visit our website algorithmicfutures.org.
