KUKA Unveils KUKA AMP at NVIDIA GTC 2026
The global economy’s $30T labor market doesn’t yield to demos, it yields to systems that generalize under messy, real-world production constraints. To help customers cross that gap, at NVIDIA GTC 2026 (March 16-19) in San Jose, Calif.
KUKA unveiled the KUKA Automation Management Platform (KUKA AMP), a new platform layer designed to take Physical Artificial Intelligence (AI) from innovation to real-world production. Showcasing KUKA AMP at NVIDIA GTC not only signals a major step in technological evolution but also highlights KUKA Group’s dedicated drive to shape and accelerate its growth trajectory.
“As the boundaries between AI and physical automation disappear, one of the biggest questions in the industry is: Who will own the interface between AI models and the real world?” says Melonee Wise, Chief Software & AI Product Officer of the KUKA Group. “KUKA AMP will be our foundational technology layer designed to orchestrate robots, fleets, work cells, and digital twins across factories, warehouses and commercial environments. It bridges the physical and digital worlds, enabling intent-based robotics, fleet intelligence, and scalable AI-driven automation at unprecedented speed.”
KUKA AMP will lay the base for the future of automation across the KUKA Group portfolio. The platform builds on KUKA’s longstanding robotics expertise combined with a next-generation software and AI stack designed for industrial use.
AI moves onto the factory floors
Industrial robots have mastered repeatability, executing the same motion with precision. But as conditions change, adapting often demands additional configuration time, scarce expertise and fragmented tooling.
“While ‘AI-first robotics’ can impress in laboratory settings, it often struggles to deliver consistent results in real-world production, where models must understand and generalize each environment and evolve to achieve the repeatable precision industry demands.
KUKA AMP addresses this challenge by standardizing how AI reasons, decides, and acts in the physical world,” says Marc Fleischmann, Chief Software & AI Officer at KUKA Group. KUKA AMP will standardize semantics, actions, and data across assets – making automation easier, scalable, predictable, and safe.
KUKA AMP: A platform built to generalize Physical AI
At the heart of KUKA AMP is a scalable platform layer that sits between AI agents and physical hardware. It provides three foundational capabilities that translate high level goals into safe, repeatable outcomes on real machines:
- Semantics (the “so what”) – Intent-based operations with a shared semantic context that abstracts the real world into machine-readable meaning. This lets AI reason about outcomes rather than rely on hard-coded device specifics.
- Actions (the “how”) – A shared control interface with standardized action primitives (basic, reusable commands) so AI agents can safely execute intent consistently across different robots, AMRs, work cells and equipment.
- Data (the “what”) – A structured, consistent stream of data that captures state and operational signals to drive continuous learning and closed loop optimization.
In operation, KUKA AMP will interpret, observe, act, repeat and predict in a closed loop, optimizing across the real environment and its embedded digital twin. This yields a virtuous cycle where every mission, task and exception improves the next. KUKA AMP is built as an open, composable application programming interface platform to orchestrate all elements of automation all within one environment. From autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) to industrial robots, as well as work cells, software tools and digital services, it provides an end-to-end view from Day-0 (design & simulation) to Day-N (deployment, monitoring, optimization and continuous learning).
A cornerstone of KUKA’s technological transformation
The unveiling of KUKA AMP at NVIDIA GTC marks a pivotal phase of technological transformation and reflects the company’s dedicated commitment to driving future growth.
“We are actively shaping this next phase of automation. Building on decades of industrial expertise and a strong robotics and solutions heritage, we are seamlessly adding to deterministic automation AI-first, intent-based automation,” says Christoph Schell, CEO of KUKA Group.
With more than 550,000 robots installed globally, increased global market share and ranked among the top two manufacturers worldwide, KUKA Robotics hardware capabilities are proven. KUKA Group is expanding its capabilities through intelligent, software-defined solutions, enriched by AI, orchestration, and digital layers. At the heart of this approach is KUKA AMP driving expansion to new growth markets.
About KUKA
KUKA is an international automation group with sales of around EUR 3.7 billion and approximately 15,000 employees. As one of the world’s leading suppliers of intelligent, resource-saving automation solutions, KUKA offers industrial robots, autonomous mobile robots (AMR) including controllers, software, and cloud-based digital services, as well as fully networked production systems for various industries – primarily for markets such as automotive with a focus on e-mobility & battery, electronics, metal & plastic, consumer goods, food, e-commerce, retail, and healthcare. The company is headquartered in Augsburg, Germany.
