Skip to main content
The Convergence
Sponsors Jump to a planet… AI & Robotics AI Marketplace AI Responsibility Health & Wellness Sports Entertainment Breaking News Finance & Investing Gaming Automotive Shopping Business Archive Dark Planet Real Estate & Housing Space & Aerospace Fashion & Beauty History Home & DIY True Crime Alternative & Natural Medicine Celebrities / Pop Culture Food & Recipes Travel
Home / AI & Robotics / Infrastructure
Infrastructure: who makes the parts
Actuators, batteries, and precision components are 30-50% of a humanoid robot's manufacturing cost. Here's who's actually building them.
Overview AI Robotics Infrastructure Power & Energy Human Integration AI Toolkit AI Marketplace Nanotechnology
Related: Automotive — Infrastructure & Suppliers (Hyundai Mobis's other business) →Power & Energy — What Runs the Buildout →Humanoid Robot Market Size & Forecasts →
Actuators: 30-50% of the bill of materials
Actuators combine motors, reducers, controllers, and sensors, and determine how precisely a robot can walk, grip, and balance. Tesla has said future units could carry more than 50 actuators each — pushing every major component maker to expand into the category.
Source: Korea JoongAng Daily →
Hyundai Mobis enters the supply chain via Atlas
Hyundai Mobis secured the contract to supply actuators for Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid, targeting mass production of 30,000 units in 2028 — leveraging its automotive-scale manufacturing experience.
Source: Korea JoongAng Daily →
Battery makers race to build robot-specific cells
Samsung SDI, Hyundai, and Kia are jointly developing high-performance batteries built specifically for robots, aiming at better energy density and output within tighter space constraints than EV batteries allow. LG Energy Solution has separately begun developing robot-dedicated batteries at the request of multiple Chinese and US humanoid makers.
Source: LG Energy Solution newsroom →
Force/torque sensors and precision gearboxes are the industry's real bottleneck
Six-axis force/torque sensors — the components that let a robot hand feel how hard it's gripping — are the fastest-growing category in the humanoid supply chain at a reported 40-47% CAGR, but production is calibration-intensive and concentrated among a handful of specialized vendors like ATI Industrial Automation and OnRobot, with limited automation possible in the manufacturing process itself. Precision harmonic-drive gearboxes face a similar squeeze: lead times are already running around 26 weeks, and the supplier base (Harmonic Drive, Nabtesco, and emerging Chinese entrant Leaderdrive) is small and capital-intensive to expand, according to McKinsey's analysis of the sector. Unlike motors or control electronics, these two component categories get little benefit from spillover automotive or consumer-electronics manufacturing capacity — they're humanoid-specific bottlenecks that don't get easier just because overall robot production scales up.
China controls roughly 70% of the component supply chain, and automakers are entering the sensor race
China controls approximately 70% of the global supply chain for humanoid robot components — motors, actuators, sensors, batteries, and materials — with Unitree's G1 reported to be "entirely decoupled from American components" entirely. Meanwhile, automotive suppliers are moving in on the sensor and actuator side specifically: Mobileye's $900 million acquisition of Mentee Robotics in January 2026 established a template for transferring ADAS (driver-assistance) sensor technology directly into humanoid applications, with Continental signed on as a manufacturing partner starting 2027. ZF, Denso, and Bosch are all pursuing similar pathways, and Schaeffler has separately struck deals to supply rotary actuators for Hexagon Robotics (1,000 AEON humanoids over seven years) plus partnerships with Leju Robotics and Neura Robotics — a genuine second front opening up as automotive-scale manufacturers apply decades of precision-sensor experience to a brand-new category.
Component Directory
Hyundai Mobis
Actuators (Boston Dynamics Atlas)
Samsung SDI
Robot-specific batteries
LG Energy Solution
Robot-dedicated battery cells
Samsung Electro-Mechanics
Actuators, precision motors
+ your company here
THE CONVERGENCE · theconvergencehub.com · Not investment advice · About · Privacy · Terms · YouTube · TikTok · Facebook