Congress just defined a robot

What government is and isn't regulating in tech. From a Capitol insider turned founder.

Laura Luise Davis, Co-Founder & CBO at USLege

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

FROM MY OP-ED IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

"These are not hypothetical questions. You will vote on them in the next five years. The bills are already being drafted by people who are not waiting for you to catch up."

Read the full op-ed →

Tesla's Cybercabs are everywhere. I live in the heart of Austin. Can confirm, I saw them all weekend. No steering wheel, no pedals, just gliding past me on South Congress like it was nothing.

I spent a decade in the rooms where laws get written: the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, state capitals, and contract lobbying. I have sat in more hearing rooms than I can count. Here is what keeps me up at night: the government is barely talking about the technology that is about to reorder everything.

This week three machines did physical work in the real world. One unfolded three arms in orbit and closed to within nine miles of a NASA telescope. One class of machine started getting smarter after it was sold, with its factory behavior retrained overnight from its own worksite footage. And one was picked up for distribution in three markets where it is already cleared to operate on human beings, and not in this one.

And Congress moved exactly one robot bill. It defines a robot as a machine with two or four legs that walks on the ground. Not one of this week's three machines qualifies.

The future is in session, whether our legislatures show up for it or not.

Laura

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THE FUTURE, SHIPPED

Three things that shipped this week and sound like science fiction. And the question I keep asking: is anyone in government regulating them?

A robot unfolded three arms in orbit and got within nine miles of a NASA telescope.

What happened. Katalyst Space built LINK, a servicing spacecraft about five feet tall and 880 pounds, with three robotic arms and three xenon-fueled electric thrusters. In maneuvers on August 24 and August 30, reported by NASA on September 4, LINK raised its own orbit, deployed all three arms, and fired all three thrusters at the same time, closing to within seven and a half to nine miles of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The original plan was to physically grab Swift and boost its decaying orbit. Attitude-control problems on LINK led NASA and Katalyst to scale that back, so LINK will get no closer, and the team estimates it deorbits in another two to three weeks. A robot flew to a telescope and reached out. It just did not touch it.

What was said. "Put simply, a satellite's grappling arm that may be used to repair another satellite in peacetime could, in wartime, be employed to disable a US reconnaissance or military communications satellite."
Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), Chairman, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe. "Orbits of Influence," April 29, 2026.

▶ WATCH THE CLIP

Rep. Keith Self, Chairman, Europe Subcommittee · U.S. House Foreign Affairs, Apr 29, 2026

▪ IS ANYONE REGULATING THIS?

Congress is moving a great deal of space legislation this session and has not touched this. There are bills to speed up launch licensing (the LAUNCH Act, H.R. 5602), to modernize satellite licensing (a bill the same subcommittee forwarded the same afternoon), to fund spaceports, and to reauthorize NASA (H.R. 7273, ordered reported 37 to 0). A USLege scan of federal bills turns up no measure setting rules for a robot that grabs, repairs, or moves another satellite. The capability Rep. Self described in April as dual-use is now flying, and the closest thing to a rule for it is a launch license.

The machines on the job site started learning after you bought them.

What happened. On September 8, GMO AI and Robotics launched what it calls the first commercial service in Japan that makes a deployed humanoid keep getting better at its job. GMO LOOP for Physical AI collects operational data from humanoids already working on real sites, camera footage and joint motion logs, retrains the motion model on it, and pushes the improvement back down to those same machines. Over-the-air updates, except what is being updated is what the machine physically knows how to do. GMO says the data stays inside its own group and is not shared with third parties, and that the service currently covers humanoids sold through its own storefront. It follows GMO SAFE, a safety-operations service the company launched in August.

That lands on top of a fortnight in which the American job site went autonomous. On August 17 Bedrock Robotics said its excavators are doing paid earthwork on active sites with no operator onboard: a water treatment facility in Nevada with Sundt Construction, a multi-million cubic yard earthwork site in Texas with Champion Site Prep, and a 1.2 million cubic yard civil sitework project with Zachry Construction. The retrofit kit goes onto an existing machine in a single day, and a person still monitors and can step in. Then on September 2 Caterpillar announced it is building autonomous systems with FieldAI, pairing Caterpillar's operational data with FieldAI's robot foundation models, with NVIDIA supplying the computing. A startup proved operator-free works. The largest equipment maker on earth started industrializing it. And now the machines are being sold with a subscription to their own improvement.

What was said. "The customer wants humanoids to reliably perform work on-site, not generate buzz. We bear responsibility for ensuring robots operate effectively in each unique setting."
Tomohiro Uchida, Chief Executive Officer, GMO AI and Robotics Corporation, announcing GMO LOOP on September 8, 2026. He was speaking in a company release, not to a committee, so there is no USLege clip of him. The clip below is the closest anyone in Congress has come to this problem.

And in a hearing room. "First, our regulatory framework is struggling to keep pace with technological innovation."
Melissa Peters, workplace safety attorney at Ogletree Deakins and a former Cal/OSHA staff attorney for more than six years. U.S. House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, May 13, 2026. She noted that OSHA's lockout/tagout standard, which governs hazardous energy control during equipment maintenance, was written in 1989.

▶ WATCH THE CLIP

Melissa Peters, Ogletree Deakins · U.S. House Education & Workforce, May 13, 2026

▪ IS ANYONE REGULATING THIS?

Nobody, and the update is the part nobody is looking at. A machine that passed its safety review in March can behave differently in October because its motion policy was retrained overnight from its own camera footage. OSHA's lockout/tagout standard, written in 1989, assumes a machine holds still when you lock it out. The FCC's covered list, discussed below, turns on where a robot was produced. The GUARD Act turns on how many legs it has. A USLege scan across all 50 states and the federal government finds no bill requiring notice, recertification, or a fresh safety review when a software update changes what a deployed industrial robot does. States have written plenty of law about autonomous machines, and nearly all of it governs vehicles on public roads rather than machines on private ground. Most legislatures adjourned by early summer, so for most of them the earliest this gets taken up is 2027.

Medtronic just bought the right to sell a surgical robot in the EU, China, and Singapore. Not here.

What happened. On September 1, Medtronic announced a partnership with Cornerstone Robotics built on roughly $700 million, including the rights to distribute Cornerstone's Sentire surgical system in select markets outside the United States where it is already approved. Sentire is a dual-console system for minimally invasive general, gynecologic, thoracic, and urologic surgery. It cleared China's National Medical Products Administration in 2024, then took CE Mark in the European Union and approval from Singapore's Health Sciences Authority in May 2026. Medtronic will sell it alongside its own Hugo platform. The United States is excluded from the agreement, because the system is not approved here.

What was said. "Surgeons, health systems and markets have varying needs and preferences, which is why we are investing across robotic platforms, digital tools and platform-enhancing technologies."
Matt Anderson, Senior Vice President and President, Surgical, Medtronic. Company announcement, September 1, 2026.

And in a hearing room. "Instead of me carrying the weight standing over a patient, I'm sitting at a console and I'm controlling and this robot is expanding what I can do for them."
Dr. Stelios Rekkas, Medical Director, Manatee Surgical Alliance. U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health field hearing, Bradenton, Florida, April 14, 2026. He said colon cancer patients who used to stay in the hospital seven to ten days now go home in one to two.

▶ WATCH THE CLIP

Dr. Stelios Rekkas, Manatee Surgical Alliance · U.S. House Ways & Means, Apr 14, 2026

▪ IS ANYONE REGULATING THIS?

Eight states now have laws in force about machines delivering clinical care. Every one of them is about talking, not cutting. They govern AI therapists and mental health chatbots. A USLege scan of all 50 states and the District of Columbia finds no state law and no federal bill addressing who may operate a robot that performs surgery on a human body, or what happens when it does harm. The heat map below is that finding, state by state.

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MEANWHILE, IN GOVERNMENT

Congress moved a robot bill. Read the definition.

The one robot bill that moved this week defines a robot as something with legs.

On September 1, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, chaired by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), forwarded H.R. 9129, the GUARD Act to the full committee by voice vote. Its full name is the Guarding the U.S. against Adversarial Robotics Dominance Act of 2026. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, introduced it on June 3 with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA). It has been picking up members from both parties since: Reps. Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis, Andrea Salinas, Tim Walberg, and Debbie Dingell have all signed on, and as of this morning the bill sits with the full committee and no further action scheduled.

Here is what the text actually does, and it reaches further than the coverage suggested. A national security agency gets one year from enactment to determine whether covered robotics communications equipment poses an unacceptable risk. If it makes a finding, the FCC has 30 days to add that equipment to its covered list. And if no agency makes any determination inside that year, the bill directs the FCC to add all covered robotics communications equipment to the covered list by default. A rule of construction exempts any country that is not a country of concern, including NATO allies and Major Non-NATO Allies.

Now the definition. The bill covers a "humanoid or quadruped robot," which it defines as a mechanical device that "possesses a body structure that uses 2 or 4 articulated limbs for locomotion, navigation, or movement on the ground" and that operates at a distance from a human operator, autonomously or semi-autonomously. Two legs or four legs, on the ground.

The excavator has tracks. The servicing spacecraft has three arms and no legs. The surgical robot is bolted to an operating table. None of them are robots under H.R. 9129. That is not a criticism of the bill, which is aimed squarely at a real supply-chain and surveillance question about Chinese-made walking robots. It is an observation about scope. The definition is drawn to the class of machine the bill's supply-chain and surveillance findings are about, which is walking robots built by companies tied to a country of concern.

What was said. "And as these technologies become increasingly integrated into our factories, warehouses, laboratories, hospitals, classrooms, we cannot wait until potentially compromised equipment is deeply embedded in our economy and critical infrastructure before we act."
Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA), an original cosponsor, speaking on the bill at the markup. U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, September 1, 2026.

▶ WATCH THE CLIP

Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-VA) · U.S. House Energy & Commerce markup, Sep 1, 2026

The disagreement in the room was about breadth, not direction, and members of both parties took each side. Full committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) said he supported the bill but had questions about how an overly broad approach could affect American supply chains and the ability to compete with China over the long term, which is why he called the carve-out for non-adversarial countries essential. Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) said that even though the FCC recently moved to scrutinize foreign-produced advanced robotics, "their process lacks transparency and clarity," and that the GUARD Act supplies congressional oversight of those decisions. Subcommittee Ranking Member Doris Matsui (D-CA) framed it as the need for a fact-based process. Five other telecommunications bills advanced the same afternoon.

H.R. 9129 is also not the only federal action on robots this year, and the issue should say so plainly. In July 2026 the FCC added foreign-produced advanced robotic devices to its covered list on its own authority under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which is the step Rep. Pallone was describing. The GUARD Act would put that kind of decision on a statutory schedule with reports to Congress rather than leave it to the agency alone.

The forward question, the one this newsletter keeps asking: will this keep happening? If the one-year clock runs out with no agency determination, the FCC is directed to list every covered robot by default. The one-year clock produces a listing outcome even if no agency ever makes a finding.

And the reason the bill is aimed at legs.

Two days after the World Humanoid Robot Games closed in Beijing, the People's Liberation Army's official newspaper called for accelerating the transfer of laboratory robotics onto military training grounds. Reuters reported on September 7 that it had reviewed more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic papers, patents, and official records showing the defense establishment examining how such machines could support or accompany troops, with the work gaining momentum through 2025 and 2026 and focused on perception, manipulation, and training data. The state-owned defense firm Norinco has publicized a humanoid it calls Fuxi, describing it as suited to sentry duty, reconnaissance, and hazardous tasks, and capable of remote operation by a human controller. Reuters reported no evidence that China has fielded an armed humanoid with an operational unit.

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THE HEAT MAP

This week: has your state written a rule about a machine delivering clinical care to a patient?

COLOR KEY    law in force (8)  ·   rolling back (0)  ·   bill pending (5)  ·   nothing in force (38)

• Law in force, 8 states. California's AB 489 bars an AI system from using language that falsely implies its advice comes from a licensed health care professional, enforceable by the state health licensing boards. Nevada's AB 406 prohibits offering AI systems that purport to provide professional mental or behavioral health care, limits licensed providers to administrative uses, and carries civil penalties up to $15,000 per violation. Utah acted through HB 452, Illinois through Public Act 104-0054, and Maine through LD 2082, which became Public Law Chapter 687 on April 13, 2026. Rhode Island's S 2197 was signed on June 22, 2026, Vermont's H. 816 became Act 156 when the governor approved it on June 17, 2026, and Colorado's HB 1195 was signed on June 2, 2026.
• Bill pending, 5 states. Massachusetts S 2632 cleared committee with a recommendation to pass and sits in Senate Ways and Means, though the legislature's formal sessions ended July 31. Ohio HB 525 would bar AI from diagnosing, interacting directly with clients, or generating a treatment plan without review, and has sat in committee since October. Pennsylvania has two live, HB 1993 and HB 2100. New York A 9106 is in committee. South Carolina S 788 cleared the Senate in April on a 44 to 0 vote and, per the state's own record, is still before a House committee.
• Nothing in force, 37 states and D.C. In many of them a bill was written and did not survive the session. Idaho and Iowa produced the two most ambitious proposals in the country, each creating a state board to license what Iowa called artificial intelligence augmented and autonomous service providers, with license classes and defined autonomy levels. That is a state licensing a machine to practice medicine. Both died when those legislatures adjourned in spring 2026, neither having advanced out of committee. Minnesota's bill cleared two committees and died in a third. Bills also died in Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. New Hampshire had the purest version of the question anywhere, SB 640, which would have barred anyone from using AI to provide any service that requires a professional license; the House voted it inexpedient to legislate on May 14, 2026. South Dakota had two and both ended in February, HB 1144 withdrawn by its prime sponsor and SB 168 deferred to the 41st legislative day.
• Rolling back, zero states. Not one state moved to loosen a rule on machines delivering care. As in the last several issues of this newsletter, the deregulating column is empty.
• What this map deliberately does not count. Three categories are excluded, and naming them matters more than the tidy number. First, insurer and utilization-review AI, which is a much larger wave: Colorado's HB 1139, signed five days before HB 1195, is in that bucket, because it governs carriers using AI to review claims rather than machines treating patients. Second, consumer and minor-safety AI-companion laws, which include Connecticut's SB 5 (signed May 27, 2026), Nebraska's conversational-AI provisions folded into another bill in April, and Washington's HB 2225, an enacted companion-chatbot law effective January 1, 2027 that requires disclosure and self-harm protocols. Washington has a law; it is not a law about clinical practice. North Carolina's S 963 belongs in this bucket too: it would license health-information chatbots through the state Department of Justice, which is data and consumer duty rather than authority to treat a patient. Third, AI documentation and scribing disclosure on its own. Move any of those three lines and the map changes color, which is the honest caveat on any map like this.
• Method and limits. All 51 jurisdictions were checked and every tile is a finding, not a guess. Status was read per bill in USLege rather than inferred from a title, and only a signed law is colored red; a bill pointing in either direction is orange while it is still alive. An independent review of this map before publication moved six states and held one. Rhode Island and Vermont turned out to have enacted laws this newsletter had first logged as pending; Idaho, Iowa, and Minnesota turned out to have died at adjournment; and North Carolina moved to the excluded column above on scope. South Carolina was challenged as effectively dead after adjournment and kept as pending, because the state's own bill record still reports it before a House committee, and this newsletter follows the official record over an inference. North Dakota's legislature meets in odd years, so it had no 2026 regular session in which to act. A handful of bills above are cited by number without a link, because a verified official URL could not be confirmed before send, and an honest citation beats a guessed link. The federal government is not scored on this state map; federal action is covered above.

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THE BIG QUESTION

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WHO'S WRITING

Laura Luise Davis, Capitol insider to tech founder.

I'm a lobbyist turned founder turned coder. I know a lot of lobbyists. And legislators. And agency leaders. They're my customers. Now I spend hours every day inside AI, sharing what I'm realizing and what government is and isn't regulating. This is not a how-to. It's a warning about what's coming.

WHO IT'S FOR

Tech: Cool. DM me if you need help.
Gov: You need to learn what's happening in tech.
Lobby: You're really going to want to read this.

Send this to someone. Know a founder about to get blindsided by a state law, or a policy person who'd rather see it coming? Forward this. SESSION grows by word of mouth.

Are you in tech and want to be on my podcast, Bills & Business? Reach out to me: [email protected].

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Written by Laura Luise Davis, Co-Founder & CBO at USLege · laural