America's robotics industry sees a familiar 'Made in China' problem

US robotics leaders and policymakers have raised concerns that its competition abroad, namely China, has a critical manufacturing and supply-chain advantage.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images Leaders in the US robotics industry see manufacturing as one of the main bottlenecks for scaling.

Physical Intelligence cofounder Sergey Levine said access to hardware would advance US progress.

Robotics executives have said a lot of the parts are outsourced from China.

The brains may come from the US, but the body could very well be Made In China .

At Physical Intelligence, a San Francisco-based startup, cofounder and researcher Sergey Levine is building the models, or brains, designed to provide intelligence for a range of robots — be they warehouse robots or humanoid machines.

Physical Intelligence is one of many startups in Silicon Valley working on robotics software.

In an episode of The Peterman Pod published Monday, Levine said the US robotics industry has its own advantages against competition abroad, but the one area that could significantly advance America's progress is building the hardware supply chain.

"Availability of reliable low-cost hardware is a big deal.

And right now, hardware used for robotics research — a lot of that does come from China," Levine said.

"It's good.

It's relatively inexpensive.

It's of high quality and meets the standards that people generally need.

But it'd be awfully nice to be able to source all of that domestically as well.