Future investment trends: look for these three Rs

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I love my work as a futurist, I get involved with many different industries and many times when I’m presenting at conferences I mention companies that are on the global forefront of these major trends. Even though I’ll be mentioning companies and industries that will be booming, please don’t take any of my comments and opinions as investment advice.

With that in mind, let’s move on to the three Rs of the future. What are the three Rs? And I don’t mean Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic; I mean Robotics, Remote sensors and Regenerative medicine.

Let’s get started with robotics

Robots are booming world-wide. They’re booming in the military, in medicine and in mining. Peter Singer wrote a fantastic book in 2009 that I think is a must read. In fact, it’s on the official reading list of the Australian navy and the US air force and navy as well. He talked about the rise of the robot in modern warfare and about how rapidly it was progressing. Well since his book came out, many of these UAVs – or unmanned aerial vehicles – have been used for strategic defence and attacks and for monitoring. In fact, it’s not just the US using them, over 76 countries now use UAVs in the military and for policing.

In the mining industry, robotics is booming as well; they’re using robotic diggers, trucks and transports. Look carefully at these trucks (pictured in video); you’ll notice they don’t have any drivers. And companies like Rio Tinto (RIO) are continuing their investment in robotics and automation because of the labour shortage that they’re still experiencing and according to them, it just plain makes great economic sense.

You’ll see these robots used in all sorts of applications. Incredible unmanned drones that go inside caves and map them in 3D – this is dangerous for humans, but robots are expendable. You’ll see them in the air, you’ll see them on the ground, you’ll see them underwater as well. If it’s looking for surveying, broken pipelines, or mapping the coral reefs before they put things underwater, these are fantastic applications for robots and this area is booming in a major way. Hundreds of thousands of these robots will be ordered in the future.

Robots in medicine are booming as well. In 1999, Intuitive Surgical released their da Vinci surgery system and since that time, robotic surgeries have doubled in the last five years. Look at Intuitive Surgical’s stock (pictured in video); they’re not doing too bad for a bad new industry that has just emerged in the last decade.

Also in pharmacy, robots are being used for dispensing and reducing the error rate, which sometimes at hospital dispensing units and pharmacy, the error rate can be as much as 22%! That’s not good. Robots are almost perfect when it comes to this as well.

I was presenting along with another futurist by the name of Bernard Salt from KPMG at an aged care conference down in Tasmania last year and he was talking about the problem of aged care. One of the problems in aged care, again, is a labour shortage and that the aged carers – the people who are looking after these patients – are having many injuries, mainly lifting problems.

Now Japan is ahead of us on this curve and they have been developing these robots to be assistants to nurses.

Robots are here. It’s a global world-wide trend and it shouldn’t be missed.

Next: Craig Rispin will discuss the rise of remote sensors in the coming weeks.

Important information: This content has been prepared without taking account of the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular individual. It does not constitute formal advice. Anyone should consider the appropriateness of the information in regards to their circumstances.

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