GRAIN Producers Australia (GPA) has made a submission to the Australian Government to develop a National Robotics Strategy, advocating for a clear pathway to adoption for autonomous farm machinery.
GPA's submission follows previous work to introduce an autonomy Code of Practice for the use of agricultural machinery in Australia.
Led by expert consultant, Dr Rohan Rainbow, the Code of Practice for Agricultural Mobile Field Machinery with Autonomous Functions in Australia is a joint project with GPA, the Tractor and Machinery Association of Australia (TMA) and the Society of Precision Agriculture Australia (SPAA).
The Strategy's discussion paper says in 2021, Australian robotics companies were estimated to be worth $18 billion in annual revenue, up from $12 billion in 2018.
The paper notes that automation, in part enabled by robotics, was forecast in 2019 to add an additional $170 billion to $600 billion to Australia's annual gross domestic product by 2030 given sufficient investment across the private and public sectors.