Robotics veteran who built robots in China says the US startup playbook won't work
lukas_m_ziegler · x · 2026-10-18
A developer with years of experience building robots in China argues the US robotics startup playbook — invent the ultimate actuator at pre-seed, figure out mass production later — won't work. The hard part isn't inventing a beautiful topology, it's process engineering.
The real US-China delta, he says, is the ability to execute the enormous physical and mental work of iterating thousands of times on product designs and manufacturing processes — partly because much tacit knowledge and management systems have left the US, and partly because of the sheer human labor required.
This can't be solved by buying traditional automation lines: it requires intuition-driven ideation — walking the line, talking to assembly workers, and forming hypotheses about where improvements can be made.
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