“After a year defined by uncertainty — largely from tariffs — automation companies should be entering 2026 with renewed confidence and optimism.”

Uncertainty in 2025 created headwinds, but as the tariff hangover lifts and companies begin adapting to challenges, 2026 is expected to be a year of momentum and growth, according to Association for Advancing Automation (A3) executive vice president Alex Shikany. Growth in automation was among several topics discussed on this special episode of the Manufacturing Matters podcast.

In the episode, TECH B2B Marketing’s Jimmy Carroll joined Shikany for a conversation that dove into statistics, key market drivers, and the technologies and trends shaping the next phase of robotics, machine vision, and industrial automation in general.

Shikany shared his insights into growth drivers, which include warehousing and logistics, semiconductors, agriculture, food and consumer goods, construction, and non-automotive manufacturing in general. Shikany and Carroll also discussed the risk of underinvesting in automation, labor shortages, reshoring, and the recent surge in U.S. manufacturing investments. Additional topics included lights-out operations, key enabling automation technologies such as humanoids, and robot safety.

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Jimmy Carroll: [00:00:01] Hi everybody. My name is Jimmy Carroll. I’m the vice president of operations at Tech B2B Marketing. And welcome to this special episode of the Manufacturing Matters podcast, where we’re filming at the A3 Business Forum 2026, and you probably know him by now, but I have the pleasure of being joined by Alex Shikany, who is the executive vice president of A3. Alex, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Alex Shikany: [00:03:10] Awesome to be here with you, man. Appreciate it. Nothing like starting the year with the forum and getting everybody together.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:03:15] It is my favorite event. There’s a lot of great events throughout the year, but it is my favorite event for the chance to be able to see everybody and actually get to talk to them. And you go to Automate and you might see 40,000, maybe 50,000 we’re saying this year, and you make plans to see somebody and you might not see them at all. So for that reason, I like this one. So jumping right in. We just saw a really good executive roundtable discussion that looked at trends and technologies for 2026 and a look back at 2025. And so in 2025, the word was “uncertain.” There was uncertainty. There was still a lot of reason for optimism. And now as we look toward 2026, it looks like there’s more opportunity. I know you’re going to give your speech tomorrow and your keynote. It’s going to take a deeper dive, but could you give us a sneak peek on what to expect for this year?

Alex Shikany: [00:04:05] Yeah, I think you set that up perfectly in terms of what I’m going to deliver tomorrow: 2025 actually ended up to be a positive momentum year from a sales perspective for robotics and machine vision industries. So we ticked up from 2024. It was single-digit percent for robotics. I believe it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%. I’ll dive deeper tomorrow. And for vision, I think it was again around that 5% to 7%, somewhere in there. So we saw some growth there. But when you dive into the specific segments of the different groups, robotics or machine vision, what you see is that there were bright spots and then there were still companies that struggled last year. It wasn’t across the board a rising tide. But I do think what you said about uncertainty last year really did impact a lot of people. It was policy uncertainty. People were dealing with different tariffs. Depending on where they were headquartered, they were having different issues with that. So it was a mix. But in 2026, your characterization I think is perfect in terms of what we just heard on the panel. My message is going to be: There is absolutely more enthusiasm, energy, and opportunity out there right now. And we heard Andre from Schneider in there on the panel basically say he feels everyone just kind of knows tariffs are here for a while, and that’s kind of the certainty they were looking for. Are these going to just be here for a while and then go completely away? I think people are starting to see it’s more likely going to be here for the foreseeable future for a little while. So let’s just charge ahead, sell our products, reach out to our customers, adjust our pricing strategies. But when you look at the headlines that are being generated, you look at the interest from the U.S. government and others, there’s so many opportunities on all fronts for automation companies, and that’s what excites me about ’26.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:05:49] Well, I love it. And one of the things that was said in that panel that I really liked was, I think it was Mike Cicco from FANUC said that the hangover is sort of lifting when it comes to tariffs. It’s like it happened, and let’s move forward.

Alex Shikany: [00:06:00] Right. Yeah. And we’ve heard similar messages in Washington when we go meet with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. That’s their position, generally speaking about it. We say, “Look, less tariffs would be better for our technology. You don’t want to stifle it. You don’t want to stifle investment.” Many robots that U.S. companies deploy we know come from companies headquartered outside the U.S. Very very small number of domestic industrial robots produced here in the U.S. today. Now that number is growing. We’re seeing big announcements of factories and things, but yeah, this is the environment now. People understand that. We also have seen the growth in Automate. You mentioned 50,000 people, customers from new industries coming to automation for the first time. The interest level has never been higher. And so you couple those two things together, the suppliers and the large part of this room here, they know they’ve got to get going, because if they don’t, they’re going to be behind the eight ball so to speak.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:06:59] Yeah. And you mentioned Andre, and he had another really nice soundbite that I liked. And he said, “Hey, a lot of companies are seeming to realize that the risk of under-investing far outweighs the risk of over-investing.” So it’s like, “Don’t get left behind” is the idea. I don’t know when you started giving this market analysis. I know that your first forum was also my first forum, back in 2013. And it may have been that year or shortly after, but one of the things I like every year in seeing your keynote is what industries are driving growth. For example, around the time of COVID, we saw an explosion in e-commerce, naturally. People weren’t shopping in stores, as much anyway. For 2026, what are some industries that are going to be key growth drivers?

Alex Shikany: [00:07:55] Yeah, it’s really interesting. I just got the data in recently, last week. So I’ve had a few days leading up to this forum to really sink my teeth into it. And one interesting trend from ’25 — I’ll start on the robotics side — is that general industries, non-automotive industries, really accelerated. It was the lion’s share again. Another year posted with more non-automotive orders than actually automotive. That may sound initially like, well, automotive had a bad year, which isn’t actually true when you look deeper. OEMs had a great year, year over year versus ’24. It was the components suppliers that are still lagging the OEMs, that haven’t really pulled the trigger yet. So I expect a lot of those component suppliers, to Mike’s point, now that the auto companies have made up their mind on what their strategy is going to be. No more tax credit for electric vehicles. They have more certainty. Component suppliers are going to need more automation to fulfill demand and all that. So I expect this year to be a component supplier year. You asked me about industries. Warehousing is going to continue to grow a lot. We’re not slowing down our ordering. I don’t know about you. My house gets packages at a faster rate than it’s ever gotten them before. Perk of having kids, of course. So warehousing for sure. The new industries: agriculture, construction. These are unstructured environments. These are historically not very saturated in terms of automation, but there are a lot of startups. There are a lot of new members into the A3 community that are trying to address that through new solutions. And so keep your eye on those as well. But semiconductors, you saw the chart Brian posted. Semiconductors is going to be important, electronics, that type of thing. Because if the economists are right and the tensions between the United States and China happen and this Taiwan conflict potentially happens, we need to be more reliant from a U.S. perspective on having that chip production here in the United States. So a lot of moving parts. But I would look at that as one for potential investment too.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:10:04] That’s interesting. You mentioned I think twice now the idea of there have been a lot of significant investments in new manufacturing and production facilities in the U.S. And how are those places going to thrive? Through automation. You look at the job market, and I don’t think it’s still the case, but for so long it was the case that there were more job openings than there were unemployed people. And it’s like, you can’t fill these jobs even if they’re available, and they were. So all these significant investments are going to lead to more and more reliance on automation.

Alex Shikany: [00:10:40] You know, Peter Sheehan talked about that at our opening keynote last night a little bit. It really is apparent when you just talk to companies — you do this all the time. When you talk to users or suppliers, it doesn’t matter what type of company, you ask them what their top challenge is. Nine out of 10 times it’s, “We can’t find and keep people.” It’s labor related. And part of that isn’t due to just the sheer numbers of people not being there in those fields. It’s shifting in demographics, right? The labor force is collectively moving through the generations as people retire, as boomers and then Gen Y and millennials like us get older and Gen X gets older, everyone moves through the system and their expectations of what they want to do for a living change. And as you have these Gen Zs entering the workforce now in large numbers, the problem is, we didn’t really have the systemic workforce development, excitement for them as they were studying to know they should end up in automation and robotics, and there’s a good opportunity. We kind of missed that opportunity earlier on. So our work now is kind of catching up, telling people: This is an exciting place for a rewarding career. There are today good-paying careers with the automation companies in this room and beyond.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:11:59] Absolutely.

Alex Shikany: [00:12:00] But that knowledge and that pipeline isn’t there. How do we create it? Well, it’s no easy task. It’s a collaboration among a lot of different agencies and companies. And one of the things we’re working on a lot is certification and training programs that can help get us there.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:12:14] Yeah, yeah. And another one of the things that you go into that I always appreciate, and just in having conversations with you, is what types of different technologies are helping to drive growth too. Because we can say: Machine vision sales are up and robotics are up. But what are the different types of companies that are helping to drive growth. And it’s interesting. This morning we had CEOs of two different companies come up to us. And what they do is somewhat new. One company was talking about functional safety for humanoids, and another was talking about something very similar, safety for robotics and forward looking to humanoids. But what other technologies are you excited about and are you seeing as growth drivers in the space?

Alex Shikany: [00:13:01] I’ll give you maybe an answer you might expect, but interesting to me are the enabling technologies between the different hardwares that we’re aware of, that we came up with historically, right? When I talk about hardware manufacturers historically, I’m referring to machine vision cameras or robot arms. The hardware — everyone kind of understands it. There’s companies here, lots of them, that do battery hot swapping, like power management solutions. There are companies that do software-based agents, like AI agents, things that can stitch the software side to that hardware and enable a better solution. You mentioned some on the vision side. There are perception systems, sensing systems. So it’s that slice of companies that have been present, but now they’re really engaged because they can engage with the hardware and the software people and make everything work appropriately together to solve customers’ problems. So it’s that convergence. It’s those types of companies I’m really seeing a groundswell with. But of course, we have a lot of dedicated, great hardware and software manufacturers across the board. And that’s only going to continue to grow. A lot of innovation is happening in that side of the business.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:14:18] Yeah. And I want to circle back to the humanoid thing in a minute, and I’ve kind of beat this to death over the years, but it’s true. It’s kind of a personal interest of mine is the convergence of different technologies to solve new problems for people. Like you’re seeing companies now might have the word “robotics” in their name. They don’t actually make robots. They make some sort of enabling technology for robots. And I was at an event, a Schneider Electric event, last year, a couple of months ago. And they were talking about the importance of data centers for AI, which makes a lot of sense. You need that compute power. And cloud computing is obviously becoming increasingly important. One thing that caught me off guard was like, all these innovations that are being made in plumbing for cooling of the data centers. And I’ve used that example a few times, but here, you look over there and you look at the different-colored lanyards, and there are companies in here that integrate all those technologies into one system that solves new problems. And that’s the most exciting thing for me.

Alex Shikany: [00:15:19] Yeah, I agree. I mean, the amount of times data centers come up in conversations I’ve had, either from members asking about it or just companies that are engaged in that side, their customer base has risen dramatically year over year. Even locally to me, they’re talking about in Michigan, putting data centers. I know locally it’s created kind of an uproar with some of the residents who are maybe averse to having a data center nearby. And so you’re getting some interesting conversations. But you’re totally right. Data centers. The cooling, everything that is in the value chain of data center production, much like other industries, so cooling, supply, and electrical power generation, all of that has a potential plug-in to what we’re doing here with automation, because to create those facilities, they need to be modernized facilities. They can’t be outdated. And so yeah, there’s a lot of opportunities there.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:16:18] Yeah. And you know, I think of the warehouse, a lot of the same systems, a lot of the same technology is being applied in the factory, in the warehouse. But warehouses are different. There are a lot of different types of automation technologies being applied, from inbound to outbound. I wanted to ask about lights-out, the concept of lights-out.

Alex Shikany: [00:16:41] Dark factories?

Jimmy Carroll: [00:16:48] Oh, I haven’t heard that one before. That’s nice. Lights-out manufacturing. Some people say, “Well, we’re kind of there.” But you still need at least a little bit of human in the loop. Lights-out warehousing, maybe a little further away. I just wanted to get your take. You get to talk to a lot of different companies. What are you seeing there? What would it take for us to get there?

Alex Shikany: [00:17:07] It’s a really fascinating question to think about. One, I think there’s always going to need to be people at some level of the process. So you create, basically let’s call it a fully automated facility. And you have a lot of automation doing things autonomously. The humans need to be monitoring that. There’s also support staff for the facility that need to come in, keep the lights on, keep it clean potentially.  There are operational and oversight roles that are going to be created if you have that much technology. I understand that one person could potentially use technology to understand disparate data that’s coming in. But you’re still going to need those people. And if you have more automation, you need more of them in order to make sure that you’re analyzing properly. And so I think we’re a ways out from, “Let’s create a facility that’s just going to run. And I’m just going to check and see if it’s on on my phone, and no one’s ever going to be there.” But certainly the trend is toward using more automated tools, because in warehouses, as you brought up, they’re having trouble finding the people to do some of the stuff. So they’re changing processes. They’re bringing in AMRs. They’re using robotics and collaborative arms and vision systems to handle the packages and bring the goods to the person, doing things like that. And so technology is going to fill that gap. Absolutely.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:18:29] Yeah. And you know the term “dull, dirty, dangerous.” That’s like the factory floor. That’s what robots come in and do. I mean in warehousing, imagine having a job where you’re lifting 50-pound boxes up and down all day, sometimes over your head. You might not ever hurt yourself, but long term, you’re going to have some sort of ailments. And so maybe part of the solution or just one thing that can help entice people to come work in warehouses and manufacturing facilities in the future is being able to work alongside these robot systems. And it might be you automate one part of it. You know, you’re reading barcodes on parcels and boxes, or maybe it’s an entire ASRS system, where from the moment the thing comes in to the second it gets put on the pallet, it’s automated. But you still do need people just for little things. Like I think Joe Gemma brought up, well, what if the truck backs up to the dock incorrectly? Or just little things, whatever might happen, like a mobile robot runs over a mouse. So it sounds like it could be mostly lights-out, like maybe really dark but not fully dark.

Alex Shikany: [00:19:51] Yeah. It’s application-dependent. How much extra value are you actually going to get in your industry, your application, by making it as fully dark as possible? I believe that there’s probably a line of diminishing returns that kicks in at some point, that once you have a certain amount of automation, you’re in stride. You’re making the highest margins. It’s most beneficial for your company. But in some cases you could identify those applications where a dark facility would be the ideal, in which case they’ll strive to achieve it. And that’s the beauty of this community; they’re constantly innovating and pushing boundaries. We’ll see if it’s going to be possible.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:20:27] Yeah. And that’s a good point too, because I’ve heard people in the past shut down things, like, “We’re never going to have autonomous driving.” Well everyone I talked to about lights-out, they’re like, “Maybe.” It’s not no.

Alex Shikany: [00:20:40] And maybe in certain places for certain things.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:20:43] Right.

Alex Shikany: [00:20:44] But I think when people think about that — Are we going to have dark factories? — they immediately jump to every single production factory, every single warehouse, everything overnight, switch flips. It’s all automated. Completely. Unlikely.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:20:55] Yeah.

Alex Shikany: [00:20:56] Very unlikely.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:20:57] Yeah.

Alex Shikany: [00:20:57] For certain industries, you’re making something that’s dangerous. Maybe it’s using chemicals or something. Who knows? If it’s a liability potentially. Maybe it makes sense. So we’ll see.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:21:09] It’ll be interesting to follow. Another thing that will be interesting to follow that I promise to circle back on was humanoids. And just a few minutes ago, you guys announced that you’re doing a Humanoid Pavilion on the show floor at Automate, co-sponsored by Nvidia, which is super exciting.  Talk about that a little bit. But also tell me, and you get to talk to a lot of cool companies a lot, what are you seeing in humanoids? When do you expect them to be more widespread? And I know Jeff offered his thoughts, but I’d love yours as well.

Alex Shikany: [00:21:37] Yeah. We’re super thrilled to have Nvidia on board as a sponsor for the Humanoid Pavilion at Automate, we just announced a few minutes ago. The vision for that is we’ve done the HRF conference two times. And as Jeff mentioned, it doubled in size. We saw the interest, the quality of companies who attended and spoke. So we need to be out front leading and helping educate, good and bad, pros and cons, skeptics and optimists. We need to be out there. That’s part of our mission. And so that’s why we said, “What better place could we do those things and deliver on that value than at the place we already have as an industry, that brings together 50,000 people,1,000 exhibitors, 400,000 square feet of stuff they can walk out and actually touch and see?” It’s at Automate. And so naturally it just kind of came together. We’re super excited to see the response to it. I think it’s going to be tremendous personally. And your second question to me was what are my thoughts generally on the viability of humanoids and forward looking. I went to IREX in December, and that was a great show, in Tokyo. There were a lot of, I’ll call them humanoid-type products in a lot of booths, but they weren’t all bipedal humanoids, and this feeds into Mike Cicco’s closing point there. I think the jury is out on the form factor. The most popular form factor for humanoids in the future. I think the idea of them is a self-sufficient, automated system that can navigate brownfield environments and do humanlike tasks. But for every brownfield facility at different customer locations, the optimal package is probably going to look a little different. It’s probably going to be a space in the market for wheeled humanoids, two-arm wheeled robots. There’s probably going to be a space for bipedal humanoid robots. I mean, we’re seeing Agility deploy their robots. We’ve seen Figure deploy their robots and others. And then to Mike’s point, there’s going to be alien-noids potentially. They’re going to be like five-arm robots and whatnot. So I do see a future where that’s possible. But the real stumbling block, the real thing as an industry we have to overcome right now is the safety.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:23:56] Yeah, yeah.

Alex Shikany: [00:23:56] It has to be. And I understand why Elon Musk says the same things he does sometimes. He’s in a position himself and with his companies where he’s trying to pull the zeitgeist, the thought process forward, pull society forward to what-if type scenarios, even if he I think deep down knows that we’re not in a spot this year to have, whatever, 100,000, 200,000 humanoid robots in our homes, where everyone’s going to have it. But he’s trying to pull everyone forward and kind of disrupt that a little bit. It’s going to be longer. I agree with Jeff there. It’s not going to be overnight. But once these safety and other hurdles are overcome, I think you’re really going to see some acceleration.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:24:39] I mean, yeah, there’s not much more exciting right now in the market in terms of buzzwords. It’s beyond buzzwords. These are tangible products now. But humanoids, as far as them being in the home, well, for me it’s twofold, and I bet it’s similar for you. It’s like, I would love that. That would be great. I have little kids, so it would be about 90 seconds until that thing is getting tipped over.

Alex Shikany: [00:25:02] You have kids, young kids, anyone out there with young kids: Your house is never clean. There’s stuff everywhere all the time. You clean it up — five seconds later, it’s dirty. Now I get: We have come leaps and bounds. Automation can navigate, but a humanoid walking around — a 200-pound metal machine that’s as tall as me walking around — doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that it’s not going to fall, injure my kid, or step on its toe. And you know, there’s just a million things that go through my head. And so while, yes, I would love it, I would love not to fold laundry, I would love not to do dishes. All those things.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:25:35] Now you’re talking. Mow the lawn!

Alex Shikany: [00:25:38] Great. But prove to me it’s safe, it’s basically zero risk or close to it with young kids, and I’ll seriously consider it.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:25:48] Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of companies out there working on just that, and I very much look forward to it. And I can’t wait to see the Humanoid Pavilion at Automate. I’m geeked out about it a little bit. Do you have any predictions for the next couple of years, things you expect to see in industrial automation or things you hope to see?

Alex Shikany: [00:26:08] Yeah, I do think we’re going to move the needle with policy. That’s one area where there’s a lot of attention and momentum. Again, it’s not without its challenges. Of course, anytime you’re trying to do things with bipartisan legislation, it has its risks, but there’s interest within the administration, within Congress. I’ll say generally, there’s a recognition that automation technology is the key to unlock where we want to end up with manufacturing, where we want to end up with some of the workforce issues. So I believe in the next couple of years, we’re going to see a very different, more positive and conducive environment for automation from a policy standpoint here in the United States. That’s one thing I look for. The other thing I look for is a continuing of the convergence we talked about. It’s just going to continue. I do anticipate additional merger and acquisition activity, especially if some of the things Brian Beaulieu said are likely to happen, start happening as we get closer to 2030. The companies that are paying attention to their margins, monitoring growth areas and whatnot, are maybe in a different place than companies who are just charging ahead, business as usual. And we might see joint ventures and things. So a little bit more of that and just more solutions generally. More applications in more industries. Agriculture is going to look a lot different. Today they can’t find the people and keep the people to work sowing crops and things like that that they need. So they’re going to turn to technology. Eventually that ROI is going to click. And I think we’re closer to that point than we ever have been before. So not just agriculture but construction too. We talk about life sciences, medical, an aging population. Health care needs are real. Hospital automation is unsaturated right now.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:28:03] Food continues to grow too. More automation companies popping up there, trying to solve these problems that have plagued companies for a while. As these new technologies advance and work together solving new problems. I think agriculture is a really good example of an industry that uses all these different types of technologies together to solve problems. It’s robotics. It’s motion control. A lot of times it’s AI. It’s vision. Sometimes it’s non-visible imaging if you’re looking to spot bruises on an onion.

Alex Shikany: [00:28:37] Or insects.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:28:38] So yeah, that’s a good one. And there’s so many others. And I could sit here and ask you a million questions. Selfishly, I would like to. I know how busy you are. Is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you want to mention before we go?

Alex Shikany: [00:28:50] Nothing in particular other than I would just say this moment that we’re in, kind of what I opened with yesterday, has never been a more exciting and rewarding time to evaluate automation as a solution for your company. Either if you’re producing something or you’re a startup or you’re an existing company in our space, there’s never been a better time for you to make your case to your customers than today. With all this push towards reshoring and “We don’t have the people,” so turn to us. Let us show you we can help. But users — never been a better time to approach: ease of deployment, artificial intelligence. Training robots with your voice. I mean, there’s just so much. And so we’re in an exciting moment. Jump into the pool with both feet. That’s my message. Just jump in, ask that first question, engage with that first email, whatever you have to do. It’s time. And let’s move forward.

Jimmy Carroll: [00:29:50] For those companies looking to start their automation journey or to expand upon it, or anyone who just has questions in general, I would encourage you to join A3 if you haven’t already. Visit Automate.org. Leverage the excellent team of professionals they’ve put together over the years. And you guys are growing rapidly. It’s crazy. But there’s so many of you now. Incredibly helpful, great organization. That’s where you should begin if you have any questions. Again it’s Automate.org. And if you have questions for Alex, I’m happy to pass them along. Manufacturing-Matters.com. Alex, thank you so much.