Industrial AI and robotics ·
Hitachi and FANUC partner on physical AI for factories
Hitachi and FANUC announced a strategic partnership to commercialize Physical AI that combines Hitachi’s HMAX Industry AI with FANUC’s AI-equipped industrial robots. Hitachi Group factories in Japan’s Ibaraki region will act as “Customer Zero,” validating applications such as picking parts of different shapes and production changeovers. Joint customer deployment is planned from fiscal 2027 across industries including automotive, shipbuilding, logistics and food.
What it means for manufacturers and fabricators
Two industrial heavyweights are aiming AI-guided robots at the variable floor work that still needs skilled people—odd-part picking and changeovers—the same bottlenecks many fab shops feel when labor is tight.