How to avoid supply chain issues as drone and robot production increases exponentially

Production of drones and autonomous robots is expected to explode by the late 2030s—by up to 10× for commercial drones and 100× for humanoid and quadruped robots. Publishing in Chem Circularity, researchers estimate how this boost in production could impact US and global supply chains of 18 raw materials used in robots and drones. They predict that incremental demand for rare earth metals and carbon fiber could pose supply problems and recommend that technology developers piggyback off existing capacity from other industries such as electric vehicles to prevent shortages.

"Our analysis is intended to be a conversation starter. By looking ahead, we're trying to help industry prepare for potential problems and make supply chain challenges less painful down the road," says first author Anthony Ku, a chemical engineer associated with Princeton University. "There are things we can do now to start building greater resilience into supply chains as they are being developed."

Projecting future materials demand

To identify potential supply chain issues, the researchers estimated the volume of 18 raw materials that would be needed to build either 1 million or 10 million units of drones or robots per year. These 18 materials are used in various components, including motors, energy storage, electronics, and structural components. Then, they compared these estimates to the 2024 demand for raw materials in the US and globally.

Overall, the researchers predicted that the increased production would not put an unmanageable strain on either US or global supply chains for most of the 18 materials. However, a few of the materials represented risks that could be mitigated if planned for.

In both the 1 million and 10 million scenarios, the biggest risk for a supply chain shortage was for neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr), a rare earth material used in permanent magnets, which is an essential component of most drone and robot motors.

Key risks for specific materials

Larger humanoid robots, which require larger motors, pose a particularly high demand for NdPr—the team estimated that producing 1 million large robots per year could increase demand by 20% over what the US used in 2024. The US government is already making efforts to stabilize and reduce offshore dependence on magnet material supply chains including NdPr, the researchers note.

The researchers also predicted that carbon fibers and magnesium, used for building lightweight structural frames, could become an issue both globally and in the US. However, aluminum is available as a cheaper and more abundant alternative, so the challenge for these materials would only arise in the case of significant high-end demand.

"Despite our findings that supply chain risks look to be manageable, there is no room for complacency given the critical role these materials play in digital technologies, decarbonization, and defense," says co-author and chemical engineer Chris Greig of Princeton University. "In a world increasingly marked by geopolitical shocks, unforeseen disruptions could be very consequential."

Strategies to build resilience now

To proactively prepare and build resilient supply chains for the future, the researchers recommend three strategies that could be implemented now. Firstly, they say that drone and robotics manufacturers should integrate their supply chains with existing industries that rely on the same materials.

"Supply chains already exist for batteries for electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and telecommunications, and drone and robot manufacturers can piggyback off of that existing capacity," says Ku. "For example, Tesla is already taking steps in this direction for humanoid robot production."

Secondly, they say that developers should design robots and drones so that their materials can more easily be recovered, recycled, and reused when the machines reach their end of life.

They note that this should be more feasible for drones and robots compared to other systems that rely on the same materials because of their shorter lifespan (three to five years for drones and five to 10 years for humanoid robots compared to over 20 years for wind turbines).

"Historically, a lot of the challenge with reusing and recycling materials has been that products are designed for their use, not necessarily for their end of life," says Ku. "With robots and drones, we're still at the early stages of growth, so there's a window of opportunity to design these technologies so that they're easy to take apart for recycling, which would make life easier at the back end of the supply chain."

Finally, the authors say that developers need to facilitate conversations between people who work at different stages in technology development so that they can create backup plans ahead of time in case certain materials become unavailable.

"You want to have technology people talking to each other earlier on to begin to figure out what's possible and what's not in terms of material or system substitution, because that allows you to have extra flexibility down the road," says Ku.

Provided by Cell Press