FANUC adds Palladyne IQ as its Physical AI push expands

Date: 2026-09-08
Type: ARTICLE
Desk: Physical AI
Topics: Industrial Robotics, Robot Learning, Strategic Partnerships, Systems Integration
Deck: The partnership will integrate Palladyne IQ autonomy software with FANUC robots.
URL: https://korthosrobotics.com/research/fanuc-adds-palladyne-iq-as-its-physical-ai-push-expands
Referenced profiles: FANUC (https://korthosrobotics.com/ecosystem/company/fanuc); Palladyne AI Corp. (https://korthosrobotics.com/ecosystem/company/palladyne-ai)

FANUC America and Palladyne AI have agreed to integrate Palladyne IQ with FANUC industrial and collaborative robots, extending a broader effort by the industrial-robot manufacturer to add more adaptive AI capabilities across its automation portfolio.
The collaboration covers AI-driven motion planning, teleoperation and human-assisted learning, simulation and model training, customer-use-case validation and the development of standardised deployment workflows for manufacturing, warehousing and logistics. No financial terms or initial customers have been disclosed.
In May, FANUC announced a collaboration with Google aimed at allowing AI agents to operate robots through its Physical AI Robot System. In July, it began discussions with Fujitsu around the real-world industrial deployment of Physical AI, with NVIDIA technologies also expected to form part of that work. At IMTS this month, FANUC is demonstrating Physical AI technologies developed with Google Cloud, while also identifying NVIDIA and Amazon Web Services as partners in the broader effort.
The common direction is toward industrial robots that require less rigid programming and can adapt more easily to changing tasks and environments.
Palladyne IQ sits on top of industrial robots and cobots, combining perception, learning and closed-loop autonomy. Palladyne says robots using IQ can typically learn tasks from roughly one to five human-controlled demonstrations using methods including teleoperation, virtual-reality manipulation or natural-language instruction. Initial target applications include material handling, kitting, surface preparation and quality inspection.
IQ 2.0 became commercially available in January after customer trials and operational evaluations, and Palladyne said in May that integration with its first commercial customer was underway.
In March, the company announced a $90 million, 840,000-square-foot Michigan facility with production-ready space for expanding U.S. robot manufacturing. FANUC specifically tied the investment to growing demand for AI-enabled automation, Physical AI, digital twins and virtual commissioning.
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