ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY

tackle real-world challenges. This close collaboration with industry informs and inspires new research directions to meet critical demand.

Fujitsu and CMU will advance research and development through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates their respective expertise, focusing on areas such as action generation and learning, spatial perception and environmental understanding, multi-robot coordination and optimisation, humanrobot collaboration and the integration of simulation and real-world environments.

At the Center, Fujitsu and CMU will jointly advance research and development of core technologies to enhance the capabilities and scalability of physical AI, with the aim of serving as a global research hub that drives the social implementation of these technologies.

Physical AI is expected to contribute to addressing key societal challenges – such as improving productivity, mitigating labour shortages and ensuring safety – by enabling AI systems to operate in the real world and interact with people and their environments, thereby driving the automation and optimisation of operations across sectors including manufacturing, logistics, construction, infrastructure and healthcare.

However, realising this vision requires the integration of expertise and technologies across multiple domains, including robotics, AI, simulation, human – robot interaction and ethics and social acceptance. This makes not only advancements in individual fields essential but also interdisciplinary collaboration and efforts that bridge academic research with real-world deployment.

Fujitsu and CMU established the Fujitsu- Carnegie Mellon Physical AI Research Center to address these challenges through an integrated research approach that brings together interdisciplinary expertise and connects academia and industry.

At the Center, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of physical AI, faculty members from CMU across a wide range of disciplines – including robotics, machine learning, language technologies, human – computer interaction, electrical and computer engineering, civil and environmental engineering and philosophy – participate in the joint research.

Researchers will work alongside Fujitsu scientists, engineers and technicians to develop physical AI systems designed to

The Fujitsu-Carnegie Mellon Physical AI Research Center will leverage CMU’ s new Robotics Innovation Center, which opened in February of this year. The 14,000-square-metre facility at Hazelwood Green in Pittsburgh bridges Carnegie Mellon’ s fundamental research and commercial deployment. The Robotics Innovation Center will provide specialised facilities and collaborative space to test physical AI in real-world environments.

Fujitsu aims to realise a physical AI platform that can be applied to missioncritical domains supporting social infrastructure, leveraging its strengths in providing integrated AI, computing and networking capabilities.

By delivering a unified infrastructure from cloud to edge, Fujitsu seeks to ensure real-time performance, reliability and safety, while addressing data sovereignty and governance requirements.

Technologies developed at this research center are scheduled to be gradually incorporated into the platform starting in fiscal year 2026, enabling the integrated utilisation of physical AI technologies and supporting real-world deployment. • www. intelligentcio. com

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