Uncertainty makes way for optimism

A great executive roundtable discussion hosted by A3’s Robert Huschka featuring Mike Cicco (FANUC), Andre Marino (Schneider Electric), Gabe Zingaretti (OSARO), and Johannes Zurin (Allied Vision) in a lot of ways summarized the sentiments of the event. While 2025 brought uncertainty, folks are optimistic for 2026, according to the group: The tariff hangover is lifting, customer conversations are shifting as they are looking to scale up, and many businesses seem to realize that the risk of underinvesting is far greater than the risk of overinvesting.

A3’s Executive Vice President Alex Shikany echoed these sentiments both on a Manufacturing Matters podcast discussion and in his annual market update. Uncertainty in 2025 was highlighted by things like tariffs and hesitations surrounding them, but many people in the industry believe that 2026 will bring growth. In fact, the vast majority of A3 members recently surveyed indicated that they expect growth — with 47% expecting growth of 10% or more, and another 47% expecting growth of 1 to 10%. In addition, ITR Economics’ Consulting Principal and Chief Economist Brian Beaulieu in his Economic Outlook keynote agreed, noting that the uncertainty around tariffs should diminish in 2026.

On top of that, 2025 wasn’t all that bad, having seen a 6.6% increase in annual robot orders in North America, aided by significant growth in non-automotive industries such as food and consumer goods, which saw 51% growth in 2025. Motion control orders grew by a modest 0.3% last year, but 3.3% growth is predicted for 2026, and up into the mid-5-percent range looking ahead to 2029. Machine vision, meanwhile, saw low single digit growth, but the next three years should be more significant, led by growth areas including 3D, software, bin picking, and AI, according to Shikany.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to be in automation,” was a sentiment heard often throughout the event. Jump into the pool with both feet, Shikany suggests!

AI beyond hype, robot safety, and much more

A3 is also gracious enough to allow us to film our Manufacturing Matters podcast at the event, which gives us the chance to speak to a fantastic range of industry experts, from startups to industry leaders. At this year’s event, we had the pleasure of being joined by guests from 3M, A3, ATI Industrial Automation, FANUC, Integrion Automation, KUKA, Miller Resource Group, OSARO, ReshapeX, Shepherd Solutions Inc., SICK, Smart Vision Lights, The Imaging Source, and the University of Kentucky. These podcasts will all be available here.

While each podcast was a unique conversation, several consistent themes emerged throughout the series:

• Labor shortages continue to drive automation adoption in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, food and beverage, and beyond
• AI is moving beyond hype (partly) and into practical real-world applications, where the technology — when properly scoped and paired with existing automation systems — can add tremendous flexibility.
• While robotics and AI might make more headlines, machine vision is as critically important as ever when it comes to being an enabling technology that delivers perception, flexibility, autonomy, and of course, data.
• Virtualization growth is significant. Digital twins, simulation, and synthetic data are becoming more prevalent in automation, helping to accelerate adoption and reduce risk and time to deployment.
• Safety — especially for humanoids and mobile robots — cannot be understated. For robots like these to scale, safety must be redundant, layered, and deterministic. They also cannot just rely on AI, at least not yet. Multimodal sensing, human detection, and presence sensing are all critically important.

In addition, guests also spoke about how industrial automation systems succeed when companies start small and scale deliberately. Crawl, walk, run; and defer to mature applications before reaching for the latest emerging technologies by default. Of course, the idea of 2026 representing a shift toward optimism came up as well, and if so many industry experts believe it, then I will too!

Additional notable takeaways and quotes

• A3 announced that at this year’s Automate show in Chicago they will host its first ever Humanoid Robot Forum, which will be sponsored by NVIDIA. Excited to see how this turns out. I think a lot of people will be.
• “The whole dialogue has shifted from ‘what can it do?’ to ‘when it will and how do we scale it?’” — Joe Gemma, Integrion Automation, on humanoids.
• “Jump into the pool with both feet. Ask the first question, engage with that first email, whatever you have to do.” — Alex Shikany, A3, on starting your automation journey.
• “I'm most excited about the creativity that's about to be unlocked. I think the application spaces that we're about to, that we are able now to reach, are broader than they've ever been by a large, large margin.” — Jeff Adolph, 3M, on what excites him in machine vision/automation today.
• “I think everyone needs to use AI. I think that there's a clear value proposition there. But great, you've decided to go use AI. You have to make sure that you're prepared to use it properly and your data policies, your semantic policies, and the action policies are aligned. So, all of these systems, like LLMs or VLAs, they require certain things to really be useful. And so, you have data that is consumable by these models. So first you have to get your data in order.” — Melonee Wise, KUKA
• “Automation is not the enemy. It’s not man vs. machine, it’s man and machine.” — Alex Shikany
• “This is the generation that is going to rewrite history." — Dex Hunter-Torricke (tech industry strategist, ex Meta, SpaceX, Google, and United Nations)

If you have any questions about the Manufacturing Matters podcast or would like to discuss marketing support or content needs with us, please reach out!

Need help developing your strategy! Contact us today.