Intel asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on October 16 for an expedited waiver so the automated guided vehicles that move materials through its U.S. fabs can keep receiving hardware, software and firmware changes. The vehicles are foreign-made. Since July 28 the FCC’s Covered List has barred new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices from equipment authorization, through the same origin-based listing the agency used on every foreign-made drone on December 22, 2025.

Intel says the vehicles have run its fabs for more than two decades, that no proven domestic alternative meets its requirements, and that replacing the fleet will take years. The FCC’s own guidance says vehicles like these may be covered. Intel says it does not know whether its units are, and filed anyway.

Intel Wants the Hardware Waiver the Router Carriers Got in May

Intel’s petition asks the FCC to waive sections 2.932 and 2.1043 of its rules so it can make hardware, software and firmware changes to AGVs described in a confidential appendix. It cites the one-year hardware waivers the agency granted AT&T and Verizon for foreign-made routers and asks for the same.

Software updates were already allowed. On July 28, the day the robots went on the list, the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology issued DA 26-789, which lets every previously authorized robot and power inverter keep receiving software and firmware updates until at least January 1, 2029. That is the same relief foreign drones and routers already had. Hardware swaps on covered equipment stayed prohibited.

The carriers got around that first. On May 15, OET partially granted an AT&T petition filed four days earlier, allowing two types of hardware changes to covered routers for one year. Since then the office has issued near-identical one-year waivers to NCTA, Sercomm, Verizon, Arcadyan, WNC, Askey, USTelecom, CTIA and, on September 29, Actiontec. Intel filed its petition in ET Docket 26-256, the docket where the FCC has issued some of those router orders since September.

Intel offers the FCC the same three promises the carriers made: the changes will not alter the vehicles’ radio characteristics, will not be used to market a vehicle as a new model, and will not swap a U.S.-made part for a foreign one. The updated AGVs will not be marketed and will stay inside Intel’s facilities. Jayne Stancavage, Intel’s vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, signed the filing. The appendix that names the vehicles, their suppliers and the planned changes is redacted in its entirety, and Intel asked the FCC to keep it that way indefinitely. Tom’s Hardware, which picked up the Bloomberg report that first surfaced the petition, names Japan’s Murata Machinery and Daifuku as the biggest AGV suppliers to chip fabs. Intel’s public filing names none.

The FCC Says AGVs May Be Covered, and Identical Spare Parts May No Longer Exist

The FCC’s FAQ on the robot listing, updated October 2, says automated guided vehicles “may fall within the definition” of advanced robotic devices even when they follow predefined paths, because they operate at a distance from a human operator. Intel calls that guidance unclear.

Intel filed, in its own words, “out of an abundance of caution to ensure ongoing operation of these specific AGV units.” The definition the FCC adopted in DA 26-786 covers any mobile machine that moves on the ground, operates at a distance from a human operator, weighs more than 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) including any docking station, and carries a sensor, a network link of at least 200 kbps, and software that controls its navigation. Connected cars, rail-only vehicles, uncrewed aircraft, underwater vehicles, medical devices and fixed robot arms are excluded. A vehicle on a guided path with a sensor and a network link would clear every element, which is how the FAQ arrives at its answer on AGVs.

The same FAQ says repairs are allowed and that components may be replaced with identical parts. Intel says it may not be able to get identical parts. Its petition says many components in vehicles deployed that long ago may no longer be available, that replacements would have better metrics than the originals, and that none of them touch the radio. Under the rules the FCC adopted in October 2025, a better part in covered equipment is a permissive change, and permissive changes to covered equipment are banned. The Commission itself proposed carving out maintenance updates and minor hardware modifications in a further notice of proposed rulemaking on July 23. Intel cites that proposal too, and the Commission has not adopted it.

Intel Makes the Argument DJI Owners Made, and the FCC Has Conceded It Four Times

Intel’s filing says without the ability to update its vehicles, its fabs would face the supply chain vulnerability the robot listing is meant to stop. The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology has accepted that logic four times since January, for equipment it had just called an unacceptable risk.

The first waiver came on January 21, 2026, a month after the drone listing, and let covered drones keep receiving security patches until January 1, 2027. Routers got theirs on March 23, the day they were listed. On May 8 the office extended both to 2029 and widened them to substantive Class II changes, which DroneXL covered at the time as the agency conceding that cutting off patches would be worse than the ban. The robot waiver on July 28 borrowed that reasoning, saying the concerns about the continued safe operation of drones and routers “apply equally” to robots.

The exemption route is open too, and the FCC used it on the day Intel filed. Eleven drone makers had cleared the Department of War’s Conditional Approval process by June, none of them Chinese, and all eleven carried a December 31, 2026 end date. On the robot side, the October 16 public notice DA 26-1114 lists four companies cleared since September 9: Husqvarna’s robotic platforms, ANSCER Robotics’ three autonomous mobile robots, Matic Robots’ floor cleaner and, newest of all, the automated guided vehicles and mobile robots of Volley Automation, a robotic-parking company. Each approval is tied to an onshoring plan, and the September notice DA 26-996 says robot approvals without an end date stay in force indefinitely as long as that plan holds. None of the four makes fab equipment, and neither Murata nor Daifuku appears in the appendix.

DroneXL’s Take

The drone ban was sold as a judgment about DJI. Intel’s petition shows it has become a test of where a machine was built, applied to a foreign-made materials cart in a U.S. chip fab. The robot determination names factory material handling as a reason for the ban.

I suspect the waiver machinery exists because the ban does not survive contact with a real factory, and the agency knows it. It waived its own update ban for robots on the day it imposed the listing, and it gave AT&T a hardware waiver in four days and Actiontec one in 29. Intel is asking for the carriers’ deal, and I expect it will get it on a similar clock, because the only companies this list reliably keeps out are the ones Congress had in mind when it wrote the drone version. No robot hardware waiver exists yet, and the router ones were narrow: one year, named parts, no change to the radio. Routers and humanoid robots got the DJI treatment on paper, then got waivers in practice.

Intel’s vehicles never leave Intel’s buildings and are not marketed, so its case is easier than the one a DJI pilot flying over a city could make. The government’s own determination does not draw that line. Every waiver the FCC writes for a factory cart is one more document in the public record saying the equipment on this list is not the risk the list claims it is.

Sources: Intel Corporation, Petition for Expedited Waiver, ET Docket 26-256 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-786 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-789 (PDF), FCC Covered List FAQ on robotic devices and power inverters, FCC Order DA 26-491 (PDF), FCC Order DA 26-1045 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-996 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-1114 (PDF), Tom’s Hardware.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.