US Robotics Needs More Reforms and Incentives, Standard Bots CEO Says

As manufacturers increasingly adopt robotics and automation, most products are still manufactured overseas in cost-competitive regions like China and Japan. To boost innovation and manufacturing within the United States, lawmakers are exploring ways to help U.S. companies catch up.

Standard Bots co-founder and CEO Evan Beard participated on Wednesday in a roundtable hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration focused on robotics and industrial policy.

Standard Bots, founded in 2011 and based in Glen Cove, New York, produces robotic arms for industrial applications. The company develops software, firmware, electronics, vision systems, and mechanical parts, according to Pitchbook. It has attracted investments from Samsung Next, Amazon Industrial Fund, General Catalyst, and others.

In addition to Standard Bots, Beard founded the technology-based media company A-Plus and software developer Gridtech, according to his LinkedIn profile. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics from Duke University.

Following his discussions in Washington D.C., Beard spoke with Manufacturing Dive about recent trends in automation and artificial intelligence, the future of his company, and how the U.S. can advance robotics and industrial policy to enhance manufacturing competitiveness.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MANUFACTURING DIVE: Can you tell me a little about the latest with Standard Bots and where you produce your robots currently?

EVAN BEARD: We're currently doing final assembly in New York but plan to be fully made in America within the next year. Our focus is on a new way to train robots by demonstration—showing them what to do. By demonstrating tasks, the robot learns, collects training data, trains a model, and then deploys it.

This approach makes it much easier to deploy robots for many manufacturing jobs because these models can handle variability. We're bringing this technology to market so that even average workers can train a physical AI model, which is quite different from most other approaches. The goal is for the robot to perform the job autonomously afterward.

That’s really interesting. What is your design and sourcing strategy like?

We source some parts from outside the U.S., such as bearings and chips, and one part with gear teeth which we don't design ourselves. However, we design almost everything else in-house. We don’t plan to manufacture bearings or chips ourselves.

Some components are currently produced abroad because domestic job shops can be very costly. We’ve discussed the need for the U.S. to become more competitive in manufacturing. While a 20% price difference is manageable, often the difference is five to ten times higher.

By vertically integrating manufacturing—casting our own metal parts, heat treating, milling, and powder coating all in our facility—we believe we can be cheaper than China.

How would that work exactly?

Part of it involves setting up machines to run our parts continuously. We produce five sizes of actuators and plan to run them nonstop, achieving high efficiency. In contrast, job shops in China often make parts, package them, ship them to anodizing facilities, then unpack and inspect them multiple times before shipping to the U.S.

Our process will be streamlined, with robots handing off parts sequentially. This approach will allow us to be cost competitive globally. Over the coming months, we will bring metal part manufacturing back in-house and repatriate other components as well.

Today, most industrial robots come from China, Japan, Germany, and other global hubs. Why is the U.S. falling behind? You mentioned cost, but what else contributes to this?

This topic came up during meetings with the U.S. Commerce Department. One participant noted that Japan had a national robotics strategy in the 1980s. The U.S. had many robotics companies then, but Japan dominated the following decades, producing the world’s largest robotics company, Fanuc. About ten years ago, China announced its own national robotics strategy and now leads the world, installing ten times more robots than the U.S. last year.

Other countries are intervening in the free market by treating robotics as a foundational technology and heavily incentivizing production and purchase. This has caused the U.S. to fall behind.

For example, metal part production in the U.S. costs five to ten times more than in China, depending on volume. Robotics installation, which boosts productivity, is outpaced by other countries by a factor of ten to one.

The output metrics look poor, and the input metrics to catch up look even worse. This is a critical issue many of us are raising with the government. While the U.S. values free markets, competitors are seriously subsidizing this industry. We need to act to maintain American leadership in robotics and AI, not only in AI models but also in applying AI to the physical world.

In November, you testified before the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee about advancing U.S. robotics through a national strategy. What policies or incentives should the country emphasize?

One approach is to create centers of excellence across the country, ideally one per state. The current Manufacturing Extension Partnership is underfunded and often lacks staff, equipment, and visibility. Some centers are good, but many are limited.

I envision facilities with top-quality machining equipment and experts where workers can train in powder coating, anodizing, press breaks, and other operations. These centers would enable knowledge sharing and improve manufacturing capabilities nationwide, which have eroded over time.

Another major issue is workforce training. There simply aren’t enough skilled workers. Every customer we speak to cites hiring as a top challenge. Machinists are scarce and expensive to hire.

Funding is also critical. We proposed a loan program similar to the Department of Energy’s, enabling startups to open milling or powder coating shops. To incentivize robotics, ideas discussed include offtake agreements where the government commits to purchasing a certain volume, providing demand signals to attract private capital. Credits for buying American-made robots and allowing depreciation of robots as a service under tax law reforms are other potential solutions.

The government must clearly communicate how robotics can revitalize manufacturing. We’ve lost manufacturing jobs annually due to lack of cost competitiveness. Consumers don’t want to pay more for American-made products like coffee makers. To bring jobs back, we must be cost competitive, and government support can help achieve that.

In this era of increased AI and automation, what emerging robotics technologies or trends excite you most? How do you see them shaping manufacturing’s future?

The game-changer in robotics and automation is training through demonstration. Instead of programming robots with complex procedural logic, you simply show the robot the task.

At Standard Bots, we use a handheld device that records your actions and video, or a VR headset to demonstrate operations. AI models trained on these demonstrations can then perform the tasks autonomously. While they can’t extrapolate far beyond what they’ve seen, showing them examples of small and large objects enables them to handle intermediate sizes effectively.

This approach eliminates the need for coding or rule-based programming, lowering barriers and costs for automation. It represents a fundamental shift in how robots are programmed and is the key trend to watch.