Franka Research 3

Franka Research 3 is a seven-axis torque-controlled arm sold explicitly as a research instrument rather than a production tool. It carries 3 kg over 855 mm, weighs about 18.3 kg itself, and repeats to better than ±0.1 mm under ISO 9283. Those numbers place it near the bottom of the collaborative-robot market — which is beside the point, because what this machine sells is access. The distinguishing feature is the Franka Control Interface. Through the open-source libfranka C++ library, an external workstation connected over Ethernet reads and writes the control loop at 1 kHz: joint torque commands with gravity and friction compensation, joint position or velocity, Cartesian pose or velocity, and, in return, 1 kHz measurements of joint position, velocity and link-side torque plus an estimate of externally applied forces. Internal supervision only prevents the robot from damaging itself. Very few commercial arms expose the control loop this far down, and that is why so much of the published work in robot learning, imitation learning and force-controlled manipulation runs on this platform and its predecessor. ROS 2, MATLAB/Simulink and MuJoCo integrations exist; a substantial share of open manipulation datasets was recorded on Franka hardware. The mechanics support that role. A link-side torque sensor sits in all seven axes, so external contact force is measured rather than inferred from motor current, guiding force during hand-teaching is about 2.5 N, and translational and rotational stiffness are adjustable across wide ranges (10-3000 N/m and 1-300 Nm/rad). Seven degrees of freedom give a redundant arm that can reach around obstacles with the elbow while holding the tool pose, and Franka quotes 94.5 percent workspace efficiency. Joint speeds run to 150 deg/s on the first four axes and 301 deg/s on the wrist, up to 2 m/s at the tool centre point. Two limits are worth reading before ordering one. Protection is IP40 for the arm and IP20 for the rack-mounted controller, with an operating range of +5 to +45 °C and non-condensing humidity: this is laboratory equipment, not shop-floor equipment. And in the June 2026 datasheet the safety section is still headed "certification process ongoing", while listing the individual safety functions as PL d, Cat 3 under EN ISO 13849-1 — four years after launch, a buyer should read that heading literally and plan the risk assessment accordingly. The company behind it has changed hands. Franka Emika, founded in Munich in 2016, filed for insolvency in 2023 and its operations were acquired that November by Agile Robots; the business continues as Franka Robotics and still develops the platform, shipping system-image updates over the air — version 5.10 exposes joint accelerometer data through libfranka. The controller draws about 80 W from a standard 100-240 V supply, which for a lab that runs experiments overnight is not a trivial detail.

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