>China drafts lifetime ID codes for every robot it makes, not just humanoids

How's that different to serial numbers, which most devices have, everywhere?

I wonder whether they've put careful thought into what counts as a "robot" and what doesn't eg. Is a coffee maker a robot or does it only become a robot if it happens to have "hands" that lift the cup?

That said, giving each item a UUID or even IPv6 might doesn't seem like a big deal, but they need to somehow prevent collisions.

Cue "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" where the robots endlessly reused parts from older and broken models. I do wonder how such reuse would be covered -- not because I am looking at a fantasy situation, but aren't machine parts in general, at least in theory quite reusable, and there's a healthy tradition of such reuse?

Can anyone here elaborate on why they will require this?

Are drones also robots?

Can they pay into a pension so that I'll have one when I get old?