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Franka Emika Panda
Franka Robotics
Not yet assessed
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- Verified autonomy
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Franka Emika Panda
Franka RoboticsThe Franka Emika Panda (now Franka Research 3, FR3) is a 7-DOF, force-sensitive collaborative robot arm developed by Franka Robotics (founded 2016, acquired by Agile Robots in November 2023, headquartered in Munich). It is primarily a research and AI platform featuring torque sensors at all joints, 3 kg payload, ~855 mm reach, ±0.1 mm repeatability, and 1 kHz real-time control via the Franka Control Interface (FCI). The system is widely used in academic robotics and AI research for manipulation, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning, with a strong open-source ecosystem (ROS/ROS 2, libfranka). It is a tool/platform for researchers to develop autonomous behaviors rather than an autonomous system in itself — tasks are performed by the robot under researcher-programmed or learned policies, but the robot does not autonomously decide or execute tasks without human-designed programs or demonstrations.
Availability
Specification
- hardware - degrees of freedom
- 7 DOF
- hardware - payload
- 3 kg
- hardware - reach
- 855 mm (official press release); 850 mm (community source) — effectively the same arm
- hardware - weight
- 18 kg
Price
No public price — contact the supplier for a quote.
Good · Bad · Ugly
Evidence-graded claims from the Franka Robotics deep report
The FR3 is deployed at scale in universities and research institutes, with 1,000 units produced by February 2025.
Agile Robots' own news release [6] confirms the 1,000-unit production milestone by February 13, 2025, and names universities and research institutes as primary customers — though this is a vendor-affiliated announcement and independent third-party customer verification is not provided.
from Franka Robotics deep report →
The FR3 achieves a repeatability of <±0.1 mm (ISO 9283) with a 3 kg payload and 1 kHz real-time motion control.
Specs are sourced from a commerce listing (Vention) [4] and the official product page [7], both vendor-aligned; no independent third-party benchmark or ISO 9283 test report is cited in the dossier to verify these figures.
from Franka Robotics deep report →The FR3 serves as a hardware substrate for foundation model research, including zero-shot execution across ~300 manipulation tasks via the pi0 model.
Community Reddit discussion [15] references pi0 zero-shot performance across ~300 manipulation tasks on Franka hardware, but this is user-reported and not corroborated by an independent peer-reviewed study or Physical Intelligence's own published benchmarks in the dossier.
from Franka Robotics deep report →Franka Robotics offers a suite of prototype products including the FR3 Duo (dual-arm), Mobile FR3 Duo, Tactile Mobile Robot (TMR), and GELLO teleoperation devices — all available via early access.
The official prototypes page [3] lists these products as available via early access, but no independent reviewer, customer, or journalist has confirmed actual delivery, performance, or commercial readiness of any of these prototype systems.
from Franka Robotics deep report →The FR3 is engineered and manufactured in Germany (Kaufbeuren, Bavaria).
The official product page [7] and a news release [6] both state German engineering and Kaufbeuren production, but both are vendor-affiliated sources; no independent factory audit, trade record, or journalist site visit is cited to verify the manufacturing origin claim.
from Franka Robotics deep report →Franka Robotics was acquired by Agile Robots SE in November 2023, and the Diana 7 robot by Agile Robots now supports the Franka Control Interface (FCI).
The acquisition is confirmed across multiple sources [6][12], and the FCI integration for Diana 7 is stated in an official announcement — however, both the acquisition strategic rationale and the FCI integration claim rest on vendor/affiliated sources with no independent technical validation of the FCI compatibility in practice.
from Franka Robotics deep report →
About the company
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