The Franka Emika Robot: A Standard Platform in Robotics Research [Survey]

Over the last decade, industrial robots have evolved from well-established position-controlled systems to collaborative and soft robots. In 2017 we introduced the tactile lightweight robot system Franka Emika Robot, characterized by advanced safety control, force sensing, joint torque and force control, hand-guiding performance, and the novel tactile programming paradigm DESK. In the meantime, the system has become a well-adopted reference platform for robotics research in AI and machine learning, manipulation, control, humanrobot interaction, and motion planning. It features multiple functional and widely used interfaces, including 1 kHz realtime joint torque control access or precise kinematic and dynamic models. Furthermore, it became a crystallization point of a research ecosystem since the system’s affordability further lowered the entrance barrier to high-performance joint torquecontrolled robots. In this article, a quantitative analysis and discussion of the use of the system in worldwide research labs over the last five years, its impact on the creation of a compatible software ecosystem, and examples of milestone experiments made possible with the robot are given. The robotics community benefits from understanding the comprehensive analysis of the Franka Emika robot (Panda, FR-3, FP-3) as it provides a clear view on current capabilities and usage, sets a benchmark for future developments, and offers a rich source of inspiration and learning for ongoing and future projects in robotics.