Friend,

You can construct and capital intensity (capital/labor[hours} ratio) measure which can be used as a proxy for automation.

It would be useful to calculate as by dividing capital input index to the number of total hours worked for a giving sector in the economy. This ratio would indicates that capital services (input) are increasing relative to labor (hours worked) and/or that capital is becoming more important in the production process relative to labor. 

This statistic can be an indicator of the presence of automation as firms achieve labor productivity gains through the substitution of capital to labor.