Robotics: A Global Industrial Policy Competition

By Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher

This article is extracted from the robotics case study in Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher.

The book argues that in order to compete for economic and political power, America must adopt a three-pronged approach to industrial policy that encompasses tariffs and trade; manufacturing and innovation support; and a strategy to bring down the overvaluation of the dollar.

David P. Goldman calls the “standard reference work on industrial policy in the foreseeable future” in a recent American Conservative article. The book is on sale through Cambridge University Press from September 30, 2024.

Robotics is a critical technology for the automation of many kinds of work, for the smart factories of the future, for national security, and for social issues ranging from education to unemployment to aging.

Having a strong position in industrial robotics will help America stay competitive in other advantageous industries.

So why does the US rank only tenth in robot density (robots per 10,000 workers) at 285? The leaders were South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Japan, and China, at 1,012, 730, 415, 397, and 392, respectively.

America’s lagging position in robotics is no accident. Although the US spends more money on robotics research than any other country, this mostly goes for military and space-exploration uses, not commercial applications.

By contrast, our major rivals all have serious national commercial robotics strategies, with spending to match. They have embedded these policies in multi-policy, economy-wide industrial policies designed to advance their manufacturing sectors.

They support R&D in the technologies on which robotics depends, such as machine learning, neural networks, cloud computing, AI, actuators, sensors, miniaturization, digitization, and 5G.

And they support R&D in the fields that robotics enables, such as additive manufacturing, the internet of things, and cyber-physical systems.

In Germany, for example, robotics policy is part of Plattform Industrie 4.0, a government program designed around the idea that the world is transitioning to a fourth industrial revolution.

Japan’s policy, as set forth in its New Robot Strategy (2016-2020), envisages a Robot Revolution. In Korea, the 3rd Basic Plan on Intelligent Robots is pushing to develop robotics as part of 4IR, with $172.2 million in 2022 funding for its Implementation Plan for Intelligent Robots.

The table below is a quick comparison of the major elements of foreign nations’ robotics policies with those of the US.

Hope on the horizon? The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act began to redress America’s deficit in civilian robotics R&D funding.

It greatly expanded funding for the National Science Foundation, and because robotics is a deeply interdisciplinary field, advances in a wide range of engineering and computer science capabilities will drive it forward.

NSF is also expanding its Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) program, which has made $77 million in grants to over 150 universities since 2020.

While CHIPS did not earmark major new money specifically for robotics, it did list “Robotics, automation, and advanced manufacturing” as number four of 10 items on its Initial List of Key Technology Focus Areas, which will hopefully have an effect on other federal programs over time.

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