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US government bans new foreign-made humanoids, robot dogs, and solar inverters, citing risks to national security
10:41 AM PDT · July 29, 2026
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The Trump administration is banning the import of new foreign-made humanoid robots, robot dogs, and power inverters, citing an “unacceptable” threat to national security. The move largely affects imports from China, which currently has the vast majority of the global market share.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the ban on Tuesday, saying that devices made overseas could be remotely controlled or used for surveillance by foreign governments, or otherwise used in cyberattacks.
The FCC said that exceptions would be granted if the government finds that a device does not pose a risk to U.S. national security.
The U.S. government has long accused China of hacking into U.S. businesses to steal data and preparing to launch future cyberattacks for its own military gains, such as an anticipated invasion of Taiwan. But the U.S. has also long warned that the risk of Chinese ownership alone could allow Beijing to force a company to spy on Americans or remotely tamper with their products. The U.S. government has similar legal powers.
Humanoid robots, the class of robots that move similarly to humans, are far from mainstream and are still in early development. There were around 15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in 2025, with each of China’s two largest robot makers accounting for the majority of those shipments.
Power inverters are far more commonly used in U.S. households to connect solar and other renewable energy systems to the wider power grid. Existing devices in homes and installations are unaffected by the ban, the FCC said.
The ban is the latest in a series of actions taken by the U.S. government against China in recent years, including a U.S. government ban on TikTok that forced it into the hands of U.S. investors, plus bans on a broad swath of foreign-made consumer routers, and Chinese surveillance equipment makers Hikvision and Dahua, which have been linked to human rights abuses.
Beijing rebuffed the FCC’s ban, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson quoted by the Associated Press as saying that China will use “all measures necessary” to protect its businesses.
Chinese president Xi Jinping is expected to meet President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., during a planned state visit in September.
Topics
China, cybersecurity, Robotics, Security, Trump Administration
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Image Credits: Katalyst
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The robot NASA hired to lift a orbital telescope tumbled out of control
12:07 PM PDT · July 28, 2026
A Katalyst Space robot that was launched to grab on to a space telescope and raise it to a higher orbit tumbled out of control after a series of failures, NASA and the company said today.
The company is trying to stabilize the spacecraft using back-up systems, before NASA will decide if the mission can continue.
This is the first time the space agency has hired a private company to lift one of its space telescopes to a higher orbit, allowing the observatory to continue operations beyond its expected lifespan.
The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004, with the ability to swiftly point at ephemeral space events like gamma ray bursts. The spacecraft has been pulled back toward Earth and needs to be pushed back up to a higher orbit to continue doing its job.
The LINK spacecraft was launched into space on July 3 on board a Northrop Grumman Pegasus rocket. Over the past several weeks, flight controllers have worked to commission the spacecraft, activating its various systems before it heads off to rendezvous with Swift.
However, the spacecraft suffered issues controlling itself and began spinning over the weekend. According to NASA, the spinning has resulted in “sporadic communications” with the satellite, likely because its antenna flips away from the planet. Two of the three reaction wheels that control the spacecraft’s alignment have failed, and there are problems with one of the spacecraft’s thruster systems.
Flight controllers are working to recover the spacecraft using another set of thrusters on the spacecraft to slow the spin, and they said in a statement that “we have already begun this series of burns and are seeing the intended effect.” Katalyst told TechCrunch that “this remains an active mission, and we continue to move forward with plans to rendezvous with Swift.”
Katalyst’s Kieran Wilson, the principal investigator for the mission, told reporters ahead of the mission that the spacecraft had been built incredibly quickly because of the urgent need to raise Swift in the next few months.
“All this is challenging and risky,” he said at the time. “There’re a lot of spacecraft that have had far longer development cycles with far more funding behind them that have failed for mundane reasons.”
Katalyst raised a $12 million round in June to help support this mission, backed by investors Fortitude Ventures and Geodesic Capital. The company has also won funding from the U.S. military, which is interested in a dynamic vehicle that can service satellites or surveil rival spacecraft.
This story has been updated to include comment from Katalyst.
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Tim Fernholz
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Image Credits: DoorDash
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DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business
6:00 AM PDT · July 29, 2026
DoorDash is building a drone delivery business, including its own aircraft, as part of an effort developed by its robotics and autonomy team, which will eventually operate within the company’s delivery app.
The company unveiled the new business, called DoorDash Air, after receiving a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The certification allows the company to legally operate a commercial drone delivery service in the United States.
This does not mean DoorDash’s custom-built drones will be delivering burritos tomorrow, or even next month. The company didn’t provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would be used in operations. But before they do, it will likely begin with limited pilot programs in which the unmanned aircraft will travel short distances while remaining within the line of sight of the operator.
If DoorDash wants its drones to fly autonomously over longer distances, it will need the FAA to approve its Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology, a certification that companies like Amazon, Wing, and Zipline have received in recent years.
Despite the new program, the food and grocery delivery company is maintaining its existing partnerships with Wing and Flytrex. DoorDash partnered with Alphabet’s Wing in 2022 for a drone delivery program in Australia, and later expanded the partnership to a couple of U.S. cities, including Dallas-Fort Worth, in 2024.
DoorDash Air was developed within DoorDash Labs, the R&D team behind Dot, the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot the company introduced in September 2025. The delivery bot is now operating in the Phoenix suburbs of Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler, as well as in Fremont, California.
The company’s foray into sidewalk bots and drones may seem well outside its core business model — an app that connects restaurants and customers with contractors who pick up food and deliver it to people’s doors. But DoorDash’s co-founder and chief product officer Stanley Tang said there is a common thread.
“We didn’t start with the question, ‘What’s the coolest autonomous tech we could make?’ We started from first principles: What’s the actual customer problem that needs to be solved?” Tang wrote in a blog post on Wednesday announcing DoorDash Air.
In the company’s view, drones and sidewalk bots are part of the broader delivery network it is building.
The physical hardware — for instance, a 350-pound sidewalk bot or a drone — is important to this expanded view. But Tang argues that the operating system, particularly the software that can correctly determine what mode is used to deliver that burrito, sushi, or pad thai, is just as critical.
DoorDash Labs has already developed software, called the Autonomous Delivery Platform, to handle the coordination challenge, according to Tang, and this operating system works with Dot, human delivery drivers, and, soon, the drone.
He noted that the company is tackling the full stack of challenges, from hardware and embedded systems to routing algorithms, and deciding in real-time whether human drivers, drones, or a sidewalk bot is the best option to dispatch a delivery.
This complexity was part of Tang’s recruitment pitch to engineering hires in the blog post.
“Most autonomy companies work on one layer. At DoorDash, you’re working on all of them simultaneously; nobody else is running all these systems on one network,” he wrote. “DoorDash is where the most interesting problems in autonomy are being solved today.”
Topics
DoorDash, drone delivery, Transportation
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Kirsten Korosec
Transportation Editor
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Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
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