When the Trump Administration on Tuesday banned certain imported robots from sale in the U.S., the move was ostensibly intended to boost national security and to encourage domestic robot production, but a new analysis shows the policy could also stop U.S. companies from purchasing the types of mobile robots used in logistics, such as AMRs and AGVs for goods-to-person, sortation, and picking applications.
That looming prospect may trigger a short-term market disruption among system integrators and automation vendors while they wait for additional clarity on the policy, according to a paper from technology analyst firm Interact Analysis. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) were not explicitly named in the new policy, but they likely fall within the broad net cast by the government’s definition of “advanced robotic devices,” the paper said.
The agency that issued the policy, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), defined the banned group as anything including a mobile, ground-based device that can operate away from a human operator, weighs more than 4.4 pounds including any dock or ground station, and combines sensors, network connectivity of at least 200 kbps, and software that controls navigation, perception, data collection, or remote command. The FCC named quadrupeds, humanoids, and wheeled or tracked ground vehicles as examples.
According to the FCC, the new rule was drafted by “a White House-convened Executive Branch interagency body with appropriate national security expertise, which determined that these foreign-made products, regardless of the nationality of origin, ‘pose unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons’.” In the FCC’s view, the risks of using foreign-made models of such devices are “that these devices could create supply chain vulnerabilities that could disrupt U.S. economic and national security and could create a cybersecurity risk that threatened American critical infrastructure.”
The policy is also intended to create “a secure domestic advanced robotics supply chain and industrial base” for such robots, due to their importance in “applications in industrial manufacturing, from material handling to order fulfilment,” the agency said.
Despite banning purchase of new “advanced robotic devices” as defined, the policy does not restrict users continuing to operate devices they had already bought, and it does not prevent retailers from selling such goods that were previously approved by the FCC. However, Interact Analysis said that even those operators currently using such robots could face future disruptions when they try to update their equipment through next-generation hardware, material firmware, or hardware changes.
In response, robotic vendors and integrators are now seeking answers to questions about the new policy, including how many changes define an updated model as “new,” how it defines a robot as being “foreign-produced” as opposed to simply assembled from imported parts, and whether the policy might also cover fixed automation solutions such as automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) that include mobile parts.