Franka Robotics, headquartered in Munich, Germany, develops the Franka Research 3 robot system - a force-sensitive robotic platform purpose-built for robotics and AI research. Founded in 2016 and now part of Agile Robots SE since 2023, the company has delivered over 1,000 units to research institutions globally, including Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Toyota Research Institute. The Franka Research 3 features seven degrees of freedom with integrated torque sensors in each joint, enabling compliant manipulation and precise force control at the hardware level.
The platform architecture provides researchers with both high-level interfaces for rapid prototyping and low-level access to joint torque, position, and velocity control loops. This dual-access design supports applications spanning robot learning, dexterous manipulation, and human-robot interaction research. The torque sensing capability in every joint allows for compliance control strategies without requiring external force-torque sensors, a design choice that simplifies integration while maintaining sensitivity for contact-rich tasks.
Beyond hardware, Franka Robotics positions its offering as a reference robotics platform intended to standardize experimentation across the research community. The company's technical focus areas include mechatronics, robot control architectures, and sensor integration - specifically torque sensing for compliant behavior. Led by CEO Sami Haddadin, the research-driven organization operates globally, serving academic institutions and industrial R&D groups working at the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence. The platform's adoption by leading research institutions reflects its role in enabling reproducible research across manipulation, learning, and control domains.