On July 28, 2026, the FCC added foreign-produced “advanced robotic devices” to its Covered List, a regulatory move that blocks new models from receiving the equipment authorization required to be imported and sold in the United States. The rule does not name robot lawn mowers directly, but its definition covers them squarely, and it lands on a category where most of the market, including Mammotion, Dreame, Ecovacs, Segway Navimow and MOVA, manufactures outside the US.
The rule is not limited to Chinese factories, though. The FCC’s own fact sheet sets the trigger as production “regardless of nationality of origin,” so a European-headquartered brand is not automatically exempt. Husqvarna, which builds part of its robot mower lineup in Europe, faces the same authorization requirement as anyone else for a new model made abroad.
What the rule actually covers
The FCC’s definition targets any mechanical device that moves on the ground, weighs more than 4.4 pounds including its charging dock or base station, senses its environment, connects over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cellular at 200 kbps or faster, and runs software that controls its movement. That description fits essentially every wire-free robot mower sold today: LiDAR or RTK positioning, an app connection and a base station are now standard across the market. The action follows a National Security Determination from a White House-convened interagency body, which cited supply chain and cybersecurity risk in foreign-made connected robots.
What does not change
Nothing happens to a mower you already own or one already for sale. The FCC’s fact sheet is explicit that the restriction “does not impact a consumer’s continued use of devices they previously acquired,” and models that already hold FCC equipment authorization can keep being imported, marketed and sold with no new paperwork. Firmware and software updates for those models are also protected, under a separate waiver running at least through January 1, 2029. In practice, this means every model already authorized and sold in the US, not SpecsLib’s entire catalog, is unaffected: the Segway Navimow i110, the Dreame A3 AWD Pro 5000 and the Ecovacs GOAT A3000 LiDAR Pro are three examples already on sale in the US today. More than a third of the models SpecsLib tracks are not sold in the US at all, and this rule does not change that either way, since they were never authorized in the first place.
Segway addressed the ban directly for its Navimow line: “There is no immediate impact to existing Navimow customers, as all Navimow models currently sold in the U.S. have already received FCC equipment authorization. The ban does not affect the sales, service, or continued use of existing products,” the company said, adding that it is “evaluating compliance pathways for future products,” including the FCC’s Conditional Approval route.
What actually changes
The rule targets what has not been approved yet. New models from foreign factories, generally the 2027 and 2028 lineups, cannot receive standard FCC authorization. The exception is Conditional Approval, granted not by the FCC but by the Department of War, for manufacturers that submit a relocation plan. Techlicious has reported a 65 percent domestic-component threshold for that approval, a figure that does not appear in the FCC’s own public notices (DA 26-786, DA 26-789) or fact sheet, so treat it as an unconfirmed secondary-source claim rather than a published rule. There is a working precedent, though: when the Department of War applied a comparable rule to networked routers in March 2026, Netgear and Eero both secured Conditional Approval within weeks, not years. That is no guarantee robot mower makers move as fast (none of Mammotion, Dreame, Ecovacs, Segway Navimow or MOVA has said whether it will pursue the route), but it undercuts the idea that 2027 lineups are automatically dead. Expect real uncertainty around 2027 announcements, and brands leaning harder on refreshing existing SKUs (firmware, subscription features, bundle pricing) while any relocation plans work through the process.
Bottom line for buyers
If you are shopping for a robot mower in the US today, this changes nothing about the models already authorized and on the market now: buy on the merits as usual. What it does change is how much weight to put on “coming soon” announcements for 2027 and beyond, whether the factory is in China or in Europe. Treat US availability as unconfirmed until a model actually clears FCC authorization, not just until a company announces it, and remember Conditional Approval is a real, if still unproven for this category, path to market.