FCC adds intralogistics robots to its Covered List (July 2026)
"FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau announces addition of FOREIGN-PRODUCED Power inverters and advanced robotic devices to FCCs covered list."
What to make of this?
This was more or less expected to happen considering the Trump administration focus on reshoring manufacturing or bringing manufacturing back to the US. And, while this is one outcome, there may be more investigations and potential outcomes into imported robots to the US market (see below on National Security investigation by Dept of Commerce).
Image source: STIQ Ltd 2025 AGV & AMR Robotics report (page 14)
While this is mainly applicable to new types of robots, it will at minimum add an additional administrative headache for companies selling into the US market as the Conditional Approval is rather lengthy and complex.
The full impact is difficult to foresee since the language is relatively vague and it remains to be seen if this mainly affects Chinese entities or other companies as the primary aim is to onshore manufacturing activities in the US market.
The Conditional Approval application form does appear quite exhaustive and may cause issues for investor-backed companies or businesses with opaque/complex ownership structures.
Image source: FCC "Robots CA" (see also links below)
With robots often including 100's of components it may be an exhaustive task to provide a very detailed BOM (most likely companies already have this though). It may, however, be harder to persuade anyone why a specific component was selected over another and what alternatives exist.
Image source: FCC "Robots CA" (see also links below)
Finally, the 3rd part of the Conditional Approval form seeks to establish a vendor's interest and plans to onshore manufacturing to the US market. Without this it appears FCC approval may not be given.
Image source: FCC "Robots CA" (see also links below)
All in all - this will not be a simple administrative exercise, but will include a degree of corporate planning that may go against long standing company targets of more cost effective sourcing and manufacturing.
Note that this is not legal advise and every affected entity, person and/or company should take legal advise to ensure adherence to FCCs regulations/guides.
Will Amazon![]()
step into the robot market?
The application for Conditional Approval is very onerous on companies and includes a section on how to move manufacturing to the US market.
The US is already home to one of the largest mobile robot manufacturers globally - Amazon - with >1m manufactured and deployed robots. While all of these have been produced for Amazon's each picking fulfillment processes, they have begun developing mobile robots for transportation of trolleys, etc. And, with a huge potential internal market (Amazon buying their own robots) it is neither unthinkable the company could easily develop forked vehicles, etc.
Amazon has never appeared likely to start becoming a seller of robots to an external audience, potentially because they have A) had a huge internal demand to satisfy and B) they may have shied away from providing competitors with their technical developments.
However, the FCC ruling may increase Amazon's appetite for producing robots to serve US manufacturing and warehouse markets as this may be viewed as a virtual barrier to entry (not only for Chinese vendors) and increase prices in the market. The company is best placed, among all US domestic robot manufacturers, to serve the market with robots.
Will Amazon start selling its robots on the open market? Will they spin out Amazon Robotics to produce and market its robots? Are they at least considering this at a senior and/or strategic level?
Sources:
- Original FCC announcement: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power-inverters-and-robots-covered-list-0
- Apply for Conditional Approval (PDF) https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/robots-ca.pdf
- STIQ LinkedIn post on topic: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7488324611592417280/
Comments