U.S. bans humanoids from China

PLUS: DoorDash now has in-house drones

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Jennifer Mossalgue, Rowan Cheung, Shubham Sharma & Zach Mink
July 30, 2026

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. The FCC has added foreign-made humanoids and robot dogs to its Covered List — the national-security roster built for Huawei and ZTE.

Connected power inverters went on with them: the boxes wiring solar arrays, batteries, and data centers into the grid. The order never names China, but it doesn’t have to. Chinese firms shipped roughly 90% of the world’s humanoids last year.

In today’s robotics rundown:

  • FCC bans humanoids from China

  • DoorDash is now building its own drones

  • This one-wheeled bot patrols all night long

  • MIT robots now think faster while moving

  • Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

U.S.-CHINA

Image source: Getty / Images 2.0

The Rundown: The FCC just closed the U.S. market to new foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, adding them — along with grid-connected power inverters — to the same national-security blacklist built a half-decade ago for Chinese telecom gear.

The details:

  • The FCC action targets new models of advanced robotic systems, not equipment already in use, and it also leaves existing store inventory alone.

  • The FCC’s case: cameras, sensors, and connectivity turn a robot into a surveillance device — or someone else’s machine.

  • The order also covers power inverters in solar arrays, battery storage, and data centers, which the FCC says could be used to cut power or run remote access.

  • China goes unnamed but takes the hit: 6 of the 10 largest humanoid makers are Chinese, and Beijing called the move political and promised countermeasures.

Why it matters: China’s robotics sector already has a sizable lead in humanoids, and a forward-looking U.S. restriction could slow that momentum by locking newer models out of the market. That gives U.S. companies more room to compete, but it also raises the odds of a more fragmented global robotics market with slower product cycles.

DRONES

Image source: DoorDash

The Rundown: DoorDash just earned FAA Part 135 air carrier certification and launched DoorDash Air, an in-house drone program built at DoorDash Labs — meaning the delivery company now flies its own aircraft instead of renting someone else’s.

The details:

  • DoorDash says the FAA approval clears the way for it to deliver small packages by drone and puts it in the same club as Wing, Zipline, and Amazon.

  • First-party deliveries start this fall; the company gave no detailed timeline, and early flights will likely stay short and within the operator's line of sight.

  • DoorDash also wants to build out the ground infrastructure restaurants will need to hand orders off to drones.

  • The drones use mostly U.S.-sourced components and come from the same lab that built Dot, the sidewalk robot now running in Phoenix and Fremont, Calif.

Why it matters: DoorDash is the 8th drone operator to earn an air carrier certificate, but Amazon, Wing, and Zipline cleared beyond-visual-line-of-sight years ago, and Wing is both partner and rival. Move the slowest, hardest-to-staff trips into the air, and local delivery economics change, if the hardware, infrastructure, and rules hold.

SECURITY BOTS

Image source: 1Rollo

The Rundown: 1Rollo is a striking new take on security robotics: a self-balancing monowheel from Estonia that aims to patrol tight, sensor-heavy sites with less hardware than a robot dog or traditional four-wheeled rover.

The details:

  • The robot is a prototype from Rollo Robotics, which says it uses 360° vision, RTK GNSS, obstacle detection, and a spinning internal flywheel to stay upright.

  • Top speed hits 18.6 mph with 8 hours per charge, IP65 rating, -4°F to 131°F operation, and the ability to self-dock at a charger when the battery drops.

  • A 360° vision system with edge AI watches RTK-mapped routes for people, vehicles, and open doors, then pings a human over 4G, 5G, or Wi-Fi.

  • Rollo rents the 1ROLLO as a subscription covering hardware, updates, and upgrades, with commercial rollout slated for 2027, funded by a $3.7M pre-seed.

Why it matters: Security robotics are now asking which form factor suits which site, and the monowheel argues that narrow, autonomous patrols beat quadrupeds on cost and maneuverability in tight spaces. Prove it outside the demo footage, and robot dogs have to justify their premium on robustness, payload, and field maturity — not novelty.

MIT

Image source: MIT

The Rundown: MIT researchers just demoed a new trick for robot speed: a planning system called VLASH that predicts a machine’s future state so it can line up its next move before the current one finishes.

The details:

  • The system helps robots transition smoothly between action chunks instead of pausing to re-plan from scratch, which reduces the familiar stop-start wobble.

  • MIT says the approach doubled performance in pick-and-place tasks and also improved dynamic demos like table tennis and Whack-a-Mole.

  • The method adds no extra computational overhead, and the team says it can work across different robot hardware.

  • A related tactic, action quantization, trades a bit of accuracy for bigger jumps in speed, helping robots finish tasks two to three times faster overall.

Why it matters: For robotics, speed is only useful if it comes with control, and VLASH is aimed at making machines faster without turning them clunky or computationally expensive. If the approach holds in real life, it could matter for warehouse automation, emergency response, and other jobs where robots need to react quickly.

QUICK HITS

A NY school district halted its $60K classroom humanoid after state and local pushback, partly due to the robot maker sharing ownership with a sex doll company.

Waymo is returning robotaxis to freeways starting in Phoenix, with LA and the Bay Area next, more than two months after a construction-zone recall of nearly 4K vehicles.

Enigma emerged from stealth with a $71M seed, opening its robots to anyone online in an experiment to find out how humans actually want to talk to machines.

Baidu started safety-operator testing of Apollo Go robotaxis in London via Lyft-owned Freenow, targeting public rides in 2027, rivaling Waymo and Uber-Wayve.

Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) unveiled a bill that would set national minimum emergency-response standards for robotaxi operators.

Waymo's Austin robotaxis have reportedly collected 83 parking tickets worth nearly $10K since the 2024 launch, 64 of them for sitting in tow-away zones.

Jack Technology, a Chinese sewing-machine maker, is putting 2K humanoids on apparel lines, with Siemens wiring them into the plant floor.

Waymo is reportedly looking for a way out of its Uber deal, telling Uber it will launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028.

A new wing-mounted solar receiver turns laser light into power, letting drones recharge without landing; heat-blocking layers keep the cells efficient under the beam.

Texas A&M engineers are developing fish-like nanorobots that swim through seawater, pull out lithium ions, and get scooped back out with magnets.

Aurora rolled out its second-gen driverless trucks, built on International's LT Series and priced at roughly half the build cost of gen one.

COMMUNITY

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Rowan, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team