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source https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/11/america-is-missing-the-new-labor-economy-robotics-part-1/
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South Korea and Japan have a birth rate crisis that is throttling their manufacturing capabilities
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… the only viable humanoid robot on the market, the Unitree G1, is now entirely decoupled from American components …
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… company could get any needed part from any factory in Shenzhen within hours of ordering and iterate at an unreal speed …
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… machine, or multiple machines, that can produce one or more human unit of work at equal or lower cost than that of a human …
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… industrial economy beyond the constraints of human labor …
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… Not even Google was able to overcome the data scarcity problem …
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… Xiaomi’s “lights-out” factory operates round-the-clock producing one smartphone per second – with zero humans employed…nothing to do with cheap Chinese labor, this is a manufacturing country with a robust industrial base …
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… US is losing, this is to demonstrate an absurd difference in manufacturing proficiency …
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… cobots sacrifice payload capacity and speed with weaker actuators and adding some type of safety hardware in place such as force-torque sensors to understand collision …
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… Cobots can also work as a companion to other industrial machines like CNCs (Computer Numerical Control) – where they can load the CNC with raw materials, retrieve the finished parts, and even perform routine supporting tasks like cleaning or quality checking.
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… industrial capacity necessary for entry—high volume, high quality, and low cost—is largely concentrated elsewhere, particularly in China …
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… China has advanced enough in LiDAR innovation that Unitree has already developed a proprietary LiDAR system at a slightly higher price point than the Intel RealSense depth camera …
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… Made in America” label is misleading at best, and downright harmful at worst…This is hard to talk about, but it’s even harder to solve …
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… 2020-2022 during COVID the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach experienced a line of over 100 ships waiting outside the port for their turn to disembark. In stark contrast to this debacle, during the same time period (2020-2021), China pivoted and increased their robotics installation by 44% from 2020-2021 …
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… significant government subsidy to match the lower cost of capital in China …
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… US to construct, which is 46% more expensive per GWh than its Chinese counterparts …
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… South Korea and Japan: Can’t Automate Birth Rates …
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European countries have been complicit and passive in the selling of the EU’s industrial automation capacity and technologies to China …
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US found it more worthwhile to pursue digital innovation… outsourced most production capabilities to countries with a better cost advantage as most American companies cannot compete…mercy of Chinese manufacturing powers …
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…relatively low R&D ratio and overall limited willingness to participate in the capital-heavy and risk-oriented goal to build these next-gen robots …
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China has been producing more cars than the US and Japan combined since 2009, and assembles some 70% of the world’s electronics…51% of global robot installations in 2023 were coming from China …
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… six of the ten priority sectors going forward: automated machine tools & robotics, new-energy vehicles and equipment, power equipment, modern rail transport equipment, new advanced information technology, and new materials …
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… country laid out the road map to become an economic juggernaut …
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… humanoids are now booming in China, still considered the most difficult form factor to unlock …
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… Unitree G1 is already in the United States and commercially available, and the humanoid boasts a shocking price tag of only USD$16K …
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US once had a solid base to spin up heavy industry factories, but this withered away as cheaper overseas manufacturing cut US producers out and the American economy shifted toward leading edge technology and services …
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China knew 10 years ago that these robots would be a force and doubled down again in 2023 …