The EU relies on US software and Chinese hardware for robotics
Title is a tad reductive tbf, but let me explain. I’ll go with autonomous robotics, while europe does have manufacturing capabilities, our supply lines are massively dependent on china. Europe does final processing of components and assembly, with a lot of raw material coming from Asia, and primarily China followed by Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Though if I’m being fair, this is probably true for a lot of tech industries in Europe. The main issue with robotics arises when we consider that the software is all US reliant
The leading AI layer for autonomous robotics is running on NVidia’s Isaac Gr00t foundation model, and NVidia as a whole is the most important infrastructure provider for emerging humanoid robotic. The EU has a strategic dependency on US technology providers, which has proven itself to not be a reliable trade partner, what with all the tariffs and strongarming.
For autonomous robots, software is the crux. In essence, the EU will stay reliant on NVidia’s frameworks for all their robots, which makes it effectively reliant on the US. And what happens if someday the US decides they don’t want competition against their own companies? Or they decide they no longer want to provide open source frameworks?
Would this not be a problem in the making? This isn’t an EU vs the world rant, dont get me wrong, but Europe is exposed on both sides. I’m sure companies in the EU have considered everything I’ve mentioned, I’d just like to know what they’re doing/will do to tackle this should it become an issue