FCC adds foreign-made advanced robots to its Covered List

The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau released Public Notice DA 26-786 on 28 July 2026, adding two categories to the Covered List maintained under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019: foreign-produced power inverters and foreign-produced advanced robotic devices. Equipment on that list is prohibited from receiving an FCC equipment authorization, which is what a radio-emitting device needs before it can be imported, marketed or sold in the United States.

The notice does not itself define an advanced robotic device. It states that the Bureau accepts the definitions “as provided in the Appendices below”, and the appendix carrying the Executive Branch national security determinations is not present in the released text — so the exact boundary of the category cannot be read off the instrument. Trade and law-firm coverage describes it as mobile robots including humanoids and quadrupeds. That characterisation is not verified here against the primary text, and the text itself never uses either word.

What the notice does say: the determinations came from a White House-convened interagency body with national security expertise, and relief is case by case — the Department of War may evaluate submissions for advanced robotic devices, and DoW or DHS for power inverters.