FANUC connector driver update

The enhanced FANUC connector driver expands robot-to-machine interfacing interoperability, real-time robot awareness, and secure bi-directional control across automated production environments and advanced robotic workcells.
 
The updated FANUC transformer is available now as part of the Flexxbotics open-source repository, released under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, at:
github.com/Flexxbotics/transformers

Industrial robots are central to modern manufacturing, however, interfacing between robot controllers and the many different protocols used in factory machines, safety systems, inspection & test equipment, and other plant assets remains a complicated, custom project.

Now with the updated connector driver, Flexxbotics further modernises robot connectivity by enabling FANUC robots to communicate in a standardised way with over 1000 makes and models of factory equipment using a software-defined automation (SDA) runtime designed for scalable, many-to-many interoperability.

Flexxbotics updated connector driver enables the full line of FANUC industrial robots and collaborative robots with expanded capabilities including:

• Standardised interoperability of FANUC robots across both open industrial protocols and vendor-specific proprietary interfaces
• Secure bi-directional read/write execution for closed-loop robotic cell automation
• Additional real-time robot awareness of the operational states and process variables of factory machines and equipment
• High-frequency, parallelised data pipelines capture more data including robot speeds, force, torque, cycle, performance, and other telemetry

“Robotic automation has historically required custom point-to-point integration in every workcell and process,” said Tyler Modelski, CTO and co-founder of Flexxbotics. “By further extending our FANUC industrial robot transformer, we’re making connectivity with plant machines and equipment standardised and many-to-many which enables robotics to scale securely across factories.”

With Flexxbotics the FANUC connector driver interoperates with all the plant equipment connected to the runtime - robots can communicate directly with different brands of PLCs, factory machines, safety systems, inspection equipment, cameras, probes, sensors, and others across all endpoints regardless of their protocols.

Each new machine added inherits compatibility across the entire automation environment, eliminating custom point-to-point robot integrations and enabling many-to-many bi-directional communication across heterogeneous factory assets.

Using asynchronous, multi-threaded controls, the FANUC transformer aggregates and contextualises robotic data in real time to support advanced orchestration, closed-loop control, and granular data collection for Physical AI training and inference.

The updated FANUC transformer supports a wide range of automation applications and direct KAREL programming, including:

• Robotic application interoperable cell control logic and process execution
• Automated production digital thread traceability for regulatory compliance
• Robot cluster orchestration and first-fault identification
• Advanced robotic machine tending and material handling
• Closed-loop autonomous process control with real-time processing adjustments
• Robotic synchronisation with manual operations and assembly on production lines
• Automated job changeovers and intelligent recovery enablement
• Multi-modal data acquisition for Physical AI and Industrial AI training.

Parallelised data pipelines make the FANUC transformer ideal for ingesting real-time robotic motion and process data while maintaining deterministic automation behaviour.

The updated FANUC industrial robot connector driver is released as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license on Flexxbotics’ GitHub project. Automation engineers and integrators can extend the robot interface, build custom automation logic in Python, and deploy commercially with no contribution requirements.

Flexxbotics continues to encourage community feedback and contributions to expand robotic interoperability across additional controllers and automation applications.

“Open interoperability is essential for scaling robotics beyond isolated workcells,” noted Tyler Bouchard, CEO & Co-Founder of Flexxbotics. “By providing our FANUC connector driver as open source, we’re giving manufacturers a production-ready foundation for building truly autonomous robotic factories.”

flexxbotics.com