Robionix Technologies, a Pakistani maker of AI-based garment inspection systems, says it can now build most of its equipment at home. But precision robot components remain out of reach, and its founder says Chinese partners could help close that gap.

Awais Yasin, Founder and Chief Executive of Robionix, called for joint laboratories tied to industrial projects, joint ventures with defined localisation targets and long-term training between Chinese and Pakistani engineers.

The company’s system, MagicQC, checks whether a finished garment matches the buyer’s order. The garment goes on a measurement bed, a camera identifies measurement points, and the system returns a pass or fail.

Getting that right matters in Pakistan’s largest export industry, where measurements must meet buyer specifications. Textiles earned $17.88 billion in FY25, about 56% of the country’s merchandise exports, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

In a recent installation, Yasin said only three major components came from abroad: the industrial camera, the operator touchscreen and its mounting assembly. The measurement bed, lighting, display, computer and electrical parts were made or sourced in Pakistan.

Robionix has deployed systems at factories in Karachi, Faisalabad and Sialkot, though commercial installations remain limited.

A robot is harder. An inspection system stays still and looks. A robot arm must move to a point and return with accuracy, repeatability, speed and reliability expected of industrial equipment, which depends on servo motors, precision encoders and servo drives. Yasin said Pakistan lacks local sources for those components at the required precision and scale.

Pakistan can design the structure, electronics and control software. What it lacks is the precision manufacturing base, which leaves the fully indigenous six-axis industrial arm out of reach.

“The robot itself is not the biggest problem,” he said. “The missing ecosystem around the robot is the bigger challenge.”

He saw that ecosystem while studying for a robotics PhD at the Beijing Institute of Technology in the 2010s: universities doing advanced research, companies building robots, suppliers producing precision components, factories deploying them at scale. China installed 295,000 industrial robots in 2024, 54% of the world’s total, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).

Pakistan, meanwhile, was buying finished automation equipment, said Yasin, who is also a professor at the National University of Technology in Islamabad. The gap remains wide in industrial scale and component manufacturing.

China’s production base in motors, reducers and controllers makes Chinese suppliers potential partners, Yasin said. Cooperation should start with localising integration and manufacturing, then move towards making critical parts in Pakistan.