Go to a trade show in Taipei and you will see humanoids stumbling awkwardly toward objects and robot dogs climbing a mountain composed of a few short steps. These creatures are the products of Taiwan’s nascent but fast-growing advanced robotics industry.
Many Taiwanese robotics firms focus on making secure and reliable, “China-free” products for the U.S. and European markets. But before this technology has had time to refine, commercialize and expand its footprint in the U.S., Washington has labeled foreign advanced robots a threat to national security and effectively banned them from being imported and sold.
The Federal Communications Commission introduced foreign-produced advanced robotic devices, specifically mobile robots like robot dogs and humanoids, to its list of covered products at the end of July. This means that to be sold in the U.S., these robots must be manufactured in the U.S. and domestic components must exceed 65% of the robot by value. This threshold will increase to 75% in 2029.
Given that the humanoid and quadruped industry is still in its infancy, this new rule has the potential to influence how the shape of the advanced robotics supply chain evolves. This question is an important one for many Taiwanese companies, who are well poised to become important fixtures of that supply chain.
“The immediate impact is greater policy and investment uncertainty for Taiwanese mobile robotics firms entering the U.S. market. Whether the rules ultimately reshape their complete-system strategies or global manufacturing footprint will depend on how the U.S. implements the rules,” Guan-Yun Lu (盧冠芸), senior industry analyst for the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute at Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry, wrote in an email.
A few Taiwanese firms are working on building the whole robot and promoting their products as being China-free or cheaper than American alternatives. Techman Robot, for example, is developing Taiwan’s first fully indigenous humanoid robot. When the robot is ultimately commercialized, Techman will first sell it to labs and schools for research, before ensconcing it in factories. Techman’s humanoid will be higher quality than Chinese alternatives, Pamela Chang, the company’s marketing assistant program manager, said. Another Taiwanese company, Tansimo Robotic Manufacturing, hopes to begin manufacturing robot dogs in Taiwan in the next 12 to 16 months. A representative for the company told Domino Theory that making a robot dog in Taiwan could be around 30% to 50% cheaper versus in the U.S.
Many other Taiwanese firms have mature capabilities in making key components for humanoids and quadrupeds like actuators and the reducers and screws that go into them, according to a recent report published by the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology, or DSET. Actuators act as the “muscles” for robots, translating energy into movement. Most humanoids require 30 actuators, which can account for around 19% of the bill of materials cost.
The transition to robotics is a natural step for veteran precision component manufacturers in Taiwan. Hota, for example, has been accumulating expertise in high-precision reduction mechanisms for over 60 years, supplying machines from cars to robots to uncrewed vehicles. “Many people think we are crossing from automobiles into a brand-new industry, but that’s not quite right. I prefer to see it as an extension of our core capabilities,” said the company’s chief executive, Holly Sheng (沈千慈), at an industry trade show event in Taipei last week.
In terms of the impact of the new FCC rule, direct regulatory risk will be higher for companies that are complete-system makers, but there is also an indirect risk for Taiwanese components suppliers. “Even though Taiwanese components are not themselves banned, U.S. robot makers may reassess their foreign-component share and supply-chain configuration to meet the requirements,” said Lu from the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute.
While the U.S. is not yet the largest market for Taiwanese component suppliers, and much of this technology remains in development, “its strategic importance is rising quickly,” said Lu. As leading U.S. AI and robotics companies “scale from R&D toward larger production, they will need more actuators, sensors, controllers, computing modules, and precision mechanical parts — areas that align closely with Taiwan’s strengths.”
Companies that Domino Theory spoke to at two recent trade shows in Taipei — Automation Taipei 2026 and Semicon Taiwan — gave mixed responses regarding how the rule will impact them and the broader Taiwanese robotics industry. Bigger companies with some manufacturing footprint in the U.S. seem better prepared. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. People who interpreted the rule as mainly targeting China remain confident in the role Taiwanese companies can continue to play in supply chains that exclude China.
Solomon is a Taiwanese company that creates AI solutions for robotics. At the Automation Taipei trade show, Solomon demoed its AI-powered 3D vision technology in a humanoid. The body came from Chinese robot giant Unitree. Ken Ning (甯楷翔), a public relations manager at Solomon, thinks the new FCC rule will affect the automation industry in Taiwan, particularly smaller companies that do all their manufacturing here. But the industry is also skeptical that the rule is set in stone, and will watch to see how it evolves, Ning said.
Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, will be the spokesperson for Taiwanese companies affected by the rule, Ning added, a role which he has played since the AI boom. Huang is “basically lobbying for every company here in Taiwan right now.”
“We’re working with just about everybody who’s working on robots in the world, or robotic systems in the world,” Huang said during his keynote at the Nvidia GTC conference in Taipei this past spring, just a few weeks after he accompanied President Donald Trump to Beijing. Huang closed his speech by thanking Nvidia’s more than 150 partners in Taiwan.
Another company, Hiwin, is a major Taiwanese manufacturer of motion control and system technology. Hiwin specializes in precision components like miniature ball screws, which convert the rotational spin of motors into linear movement, creating the human-like motion of arms, hands and legs. It was named among the world’s top 100 humanoid companies by Morgan Stanley.
Hiwin currently supplies components to many startups working on robotics in the U.S. market, Chris Wu (巫昌圜), a deputy general manager, told Domino Theory. This supports, in theory, previous reporting by Nikkei that the new restrictions will hit U.S. research labs and startups, which rely on foreign actuators, ball screws and batteries, particularly hard. But Wu said that Hiwin’s business in the U.S. will not be affected by the new rule because the company has a plant in the U.S. where part of its miniature ball screws, specifically the two nuts on either end, can be manufactured. The fact that the nuts are made in the U.S. allows Hiwin to claim that the product is 70% U.S.-origin and comply with the new FCC rule.
“[T]he U.S. just doesn’t have the robotics hardware ecosystem required at the sufficient scale yet. [The] FCC shouldn’t have added all ‘foreign produced robots’ to the covered list but focused on high-risk Chinese robots,” wrote Nathanael Cheng (鄭秉信), a policy analyst at DSET, in an email.
The Department of War could grant conditional approvals to certain Taiwanese companies, allowing them to sell to the U.S. market. “Based on what FCC has been saying publicly, there’s somewhat positive signaling on conditional approvals being granted for allies, especially given the fact that the U.S. lacks a lot of domestic component supply chains needed for robots,” Cheng said.
“If firms can prove China-free [bills of materials], that will help,” Cheng added, referring to the list of all materials and components needed to make a product.
There are other reasons why Taiwanese companies in the robotics supply chain might want to set up manufacturing facilities in their target markets. Toyo Automation, a Taiwanese company that makes industrial automation equipment, told Domino Theory that it is hoping to begin manufacturing actuators in the U.S. because the cost to ship a long actuator from Taiwan to the U.S. can be almost as high as the price of the product itself.
Perhaps both because of and in spite of geopolitics, Taiwan’s components manufacturers are well positioned to be among the champions of this new era of physical AI. “If AI is to change the world, it must have a body,” Hota’s Holly Sheng said. “Only by combining AI with precision machinery, sensors or drive systems can intelligence truly become practical.” She didn’t say it would be a smooth ride.
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