FANUC accelerates physical AI with Google collaboration

FANUC has enhanced its physical AI robot system through a strategic collaboration with Google. The move comes as part of the company’s initiative to accelerate automation by advancing open platforms and physical AI capabilities. Via the collaboration, FANUC has developed a physical AI system for industrial robots that incorporates the latest innovations from Google Cloud, including Gemini Enterprise, an enterprise-grade generative AI with robust security.

Physical AI is the integration of cognitive intelligence with physical action. It includes robots that can perceive their environment through sensors, make autonomous decisions and execute tasks accordingly.

FANUC robots support ROS, the industry standard open platform for robot control, of which Google is a prominent contributor and maintainer through its Intrinsic robotics AI group. FANUC’s portfolio also offers broad compatibility with widely used technologies, including the Python programming language for AI development, high-speed communication interfaces for external robot control and interfaces that enable easy operation from PLCs.

Since the release of FANUC’s physical AI system at the International Robot Exhibition in December, customer interest has continued to grow rapidly, with over 1,000 FANUC robots for physical AI-related applications already shipped.

At the company’s new product open house in May, FANUC demonstrated a next-generation physical AI robot system featuring generative AI Gemini, which understands human instructions, recognises objects and autonomously operates FANUC robots to perform assigned tasks. This transformative ‘AI-powered agent system for industrial robots’ enables both collaborative and non-collaborative robots to work together as a single cell based on simple natural language instructions.

In addition, FANUC provides full support for robot control compatible with Intrinsic’s development environment, ‘Flowstate’. Flowstate software is interoperable with ROS and allows for the quick and easy development of adaptable AI solutions by leveraging FANUC’s open platform technologies. FANUC is also participating in Google DeepMind’s ‘Gemini Robotics Trusted Tester Programme’ to advance AI research on foundational robotics models for AI.