Hitachi and FANUC Partner to Commercialize Physical AI for Industrial Robots

Hitachi, Ltd. and FANUC CORPORATION have announced a strategic partnership toward the joint commercialization of Physical AI implementation, combining Hitachi's AI technologies with FANUC's industrial robots equipped with AI capabilities.

The collaboration centers on HMAX Industry, Hitachi's AI platform, integrated with FANUC's advanced robotics and control systems. Under this agreement, Hitachi Group factories will serve as "Customer Zero" for joint validation, where AI will continuously learn site-specific production rules. This approach enables practical Physical AI that responds accurately to complex manufacturing issues, going beyond what imitation learning or digital twin simulations can achieve alone.

As an initial step, Hitachi will utilize its manufacturing facilities in the Ibaraki region as the primary validation site, targeting the establishment of deployable Physical AI technologies by fiscal 2027. The collaboration will focus on applications such as picking parts of various shapes and performing rapid changeovers when production items change. The partners will evaluate recognition accuracy, robot motion, takt time, and quality effectiveness, while also validating the combination of Hitachi's edge AI semiconductor with FANUC's industrial robots.

Toshiaki Tokunaga, President and CEO of Hitachi, Ltd., stated:

"Hitachi has been working to transform social infrastructure by combining AI with the domain knowledge it has accumulated at social infrastructure sites. Through this strategic partnership with FANUC, we aim to innovate manufacturing sites that support people's lives and industries through the use of Physical AI. By combining FANUC's world-class advanced industrial robotics technologies with Hitachi's manufacturing expertise, production-line engineering capabilities, and digital technologies, we will accelerate the implementation of Physical AI at manufacturing sites."

Beginning in fiscal 2027, the companies plan to jointly deploy these validated solutions to global customers across wide-ranging industries, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, advanced materials, automotive, logistics, food, shipbuilding, and agriculture. The initiative seeks to autonomize tasks dependent on skilled manual labor, addressing global labor shortages and facilitating knowledge transfer.

Kenji Yamaguchi, President and CEO of FANUC CORPORATION, stated:

"By positioning Hitachi's manufacturing facilities as 'Customer Zero,' we will increase the development and deployment of practical Physical AI solutions that can operate reliably in real production environments. We believe this will provide a pathway toward autonomizing many production processes that manufacturers around the world face today."