Franka Research 3 Duo

FR3 Duo is two Franka Research 3 arms mounted on a shared frame, and the interesting thing about it is what the manufacturer says it is for. This is not a bimanual machine sold to do a job; it is sold as a rig for producing training data. Franka describes a single workflow that covers demonstration by teleoperation, dataset generation, and execution and benchmarking of learned policies — the three stages of a manipulation-learning project, on one piece of hardware. The argument behind that is reproducibility. Manipulation research has a standing problem: results recorded on one lab's improvised dual-arm setup are hard to compare with another's, because the geometry, the grippers and the cameras all differ. A fixed hardware and sensor configuration sold as a catalogue item lets labs reuse each other's datasets and benchmark models under shared conditions. That is a software-industry idea — the standard reference implementation — applied to a physical robot, and it is why this belongs in an AI catalogue as much as a robotics one. Each arm keeps the FR3 specification: 7 axes, 3 kg payload, 855 mm reach, a link-side torque sensor in every joint, and low-level control at 1 kHz through the Franka Control Interface and the open-source libfranka library. Doubled, that comes to 14 torque sensors streaming measured contact force, which is the part that matters for tactile data — most demonstration rigs record only vision and joint positions. The kinematics are described as tuned for table-top work, maximising the space both arms can reach at once while keeping the footprint small enough for a laboratory bench. Perception is part of the product rather than an integration exercise. The optional Vision and Manipulation Kit is a curated bill of materials: two Robotiq 2F-85 grippers on a shared supply, two Intel RealSense D405 wrist cameras with holders and cabling, and a Stereolabs ZED Mini stereo camera on a head bracket. Teleoperation is handled by Franka GELLO Duo, an open-source joint-level teaching device. Status matters here. Franka lists FR3 Duo under "product prototypes — upcoming products", not among its shipping robots, alongside the Tactile Mobile Robot and the Mobile FR3 Duo that combines the two. No price, no datasheet and no delivery date are published; enquiries go through a quote form. This catalogue therefore records it as a prototype, and the 2025 date is a lower bound taken from the manufacturer's own material rather than an announced launch.

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