Japan's FANUC Develops AI Welding Agent, to Begin Shipping by End of Year

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 11, Japan's FANUC announced the development of a new product, the "AI Welding Agent," which combines generative artificial intelligence with an industrial robot arc welding system. It can directly read part engineering drawings, automatically generate welding parameters and robot motion programs, and complete actual welding operations. The system will be demonstrated on actual machines at the Tokyo International Welding Exhibition starting September 16, and is scheduled to begin shipping by the end of December 2026.

The AI Welding Agent was developed by FANUC in collaboration with Google, using Google's enterprise-grade generative AI platform Gemini Enterprise. After reading engineering drawings, the system can identify part materials and final shapes, and automatically generate parameters such as welding current and voltage as well as robot motion programs. Operators can either directly use the system-generated parameters to perform welding or make adjustments before actual production, enabling arc welding robots to further shift from the traditional manual programming and teaching mode toward automatically generating work programs based on engineering data.

On the hardware side, the system can directly call the built-in camera of FANUC CRX collaborative robot teach pendants to read drawings, without the need for additional dedicated vision equipment, and it does not limit the brand of welding power source. Existing FANUC CRX robot users can introduce the relevant functions into their existing equipment systems, reducing the additional hardware investment required to retrofit existing robot welding stations.

The new system focuses on arc welding applications in automotive and truck parts, building steel structures, shipbuilding, and other fields. The high-mix, low-volume production in these industries typically requires technicians to repeatedly set welding parameters and robot paths. The AI Welding Agent connects drawing recognition, process parameter generation, robot programming, and actual welding into a single workflow, compressing the programming and teaching steps when introducing new parts to automated welding production lines.