The collaboration centres on FANUC's industrial robot fleet, which already runs on ROS, the open-source robot operating system maintained partly by Google's Intrinsic robotics AI group. FANUC has now built direct integration with Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise into its Physical AI system, allowing robots to interpret natural language instructions, recognise objects and execute tasks autonomously.
At its May product showcase, FANUC demonstrated a next-generation AI-Powered Agent System that coordinates collaborative and non-collaborative robots together as a single cell, controlled through natural language. The system can understand spoken or written instructions, identify items in its environment through sensors, and determine task sequences without manual programming.
Support for Intrinsic's Flowstate software development environment is also included. Flowstate is interoperable with ROS and is designed to enable rapid development of adaptable robotics AI solutions using FANUC's existing open-platform interfaces. The company also supports Python for AI development, high-speed communication interfaces for external robot control, and PLC connectivity.
Participation in the Gemini Robotics Trusted Tester Program connects FANUC into Google DeepMind's research stream on foundational robotics models — the level of AI development aimed at generalised manipulation and task understanding rather than task-specific automation.
FANUC first announced the Physical AI system at the International Robot Exhibition in December 2024. Over 1,000 units have since shipped into Physical AI applications, indicating commercial demand rather than pilot-stage interest.
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