FANUC and Hitachi partner to bring physical AI to factory work

Fanuc

FANUC and Hitachi will jointly develop and sell physical AI for manufacturing, aimed at tasks that still depend heavily on workers. Hitachi's own factories in Ibaraki, Japan, are the first test sites, and commercial rollout is planned from 2027. FANUC supplies the robots, control systems and robotics AI; Hitachi supplies its physical AI models and factory know-how.

• Hitachi contributes its HMAX Industry platform, operational technology and factories, which serve as 'Customer Zero' for testing
• FANUC contributes robots, control systems and robotics AI
• First trials cover picking parts of different shapes and managing changeovers between products
• Tests will measure recognition accuracy, robot movement precision, takt time and product quality; the approach learns from real factory data rather than simulation or imitation learning
• Customer rollout planned from 2027 across semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, automotive, logistics, food and shipbuilding; no financial figures or targets are given