San Mateo County supervisors are weighing a plan that would make the county one of the first jurisdictions in the country to require businesses to obtain a permit before deploying commercial humanoid robots — and to route those permit fees into firefighting equipment built for lithium-ion battery blazes.

The resolution, brought by Supervisor Ray Mueller, wouldn't itself write the rules. It directs county legal and executive staff to draft an ordinance covering the untethered, autonomous and semi-autonomous machines now turning up in restaurants, warehouses, retail floors and security details at local businesses. The pitch pairs two anxieties that rarely share a policy — physical safety, specifically the fire risk of the robots' batteries, and job displacement — and it lands while no comprehensive framework for humanoid robots in public spaces exists at any level of government.

San Mateo County wants to regulate humanoid robots before it has very many of them.

That is the essence of a resolution from Supervisor Ray Mueller that came before the Board of Supervisors this week. Rather than banning or licensing anything outright, the measure asks county legal and executive staff to draft a formal ordinance governing commercial humanoid robots — the mobile, roughly person-shaped machines that companies are beginning to pilot in hospitality, logistics, security, facilities maintenance and customer service. The contemplated rules run from emergency kill switches to fire-safety inspections to the workforce effects of swapping people for machines.

"We see this coming at us now," Mueller told NBC Bay Area, which first reported the fire-funding mechanism. "And we have an opportunity right now."

The most concrete idea on the table is also the least abstract: money. Under the plan as described, businesses deploying robots would buy permits, and the revenue would be steered toward the specialized equipment fire crews need to fight lithium-ion battery fires — the same chemistry that powers e-bikes, scooters and electric vehicles, and that has bedeviled fire departments nationwide.

"It's a real problem for firefighters, both because you need specialized equipment in order to fight that fire, but also because as that fire is occurring, it's releasing chemicals into the air that are detrimental to their health," Mueller told the station.

The resolution appears as File #26-627 on the board's agenda, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post. County documents describe an ordinance aimed at mobile humanoid robots across a broad sweep of commercial sectors — hospitality, logistics, security, facilities maintenance, customer service, public information, even emergency-response support, according to Hoodline, which surfaced the county's board memo.

The framing is deliberate. Hoodline reported that the county's own memo acknowledges no comprehensive regulatory framework exists at any level of government for humanoid robots operating in publicly accessible spaces. Existing law covers adjacent technology: the state already regulates electric vehicles and autonomous road technology. Mueller has said he expects the state or federal government to eventually write rules, and that he sees no reason for the county to wait.

What the resolution does not yet do is impose a single requirement. Directing staff to "draft an ordinance" is the first procedural step, not the last; the substantive fights — over how a kill switch is certified, who inspects a robot's battery pack, whether a permit fee doubles as a brake on automation, and how the county even defines a "humanoid" robot — would play out in the ordinance itself, over months. County leaders have acknowledged the plan is early.

That leaves an unusually wide gap between the headline and the enforceable text. The county is not, this week, requiring anyone to register a robot. It is deciding whether to start building the machinery to do so — and whether the bill for the fire risk should land on the companies bringing the robots in.

The Dissent will update this story as the Board of Supervisors acts and as draft ordinance language becomes public.