MiraiBit named domestic sales distributor for Agile Robots and Franka Robotics

In an announcement dated October 31, 2026, MiraiBit said it had signed a sales agency agreement for Japan with Agile Robots SE and Franka Robotics GmbH, a group company. It will handle both companies’ full product lines, spanning research robot arms, industrial robots and humanoids. The company will provide product and technical support, including model selection, deployment and research and development after operations begin.

MiraiBit said it will cover products ranging from research to industrial use and humanoids, and support model selection and setup as well as data collection design and AI training and evaluation. Its announcement sets out a domestic support framework that goes beyond equipment procurement to help launch research and development, a development relevant to universities, research institutions and corporate R&D departments.

A notable feature of the agreement is that it covers a range of products in Japan, from Franka Robotics’ research arms to Agile Robots’ industrial arms, hands and humanoids, rather than sales of a single model. The arrangement broadens product options while having the same point of contact handle selection, setup and technical support after deployment. The business focus, therefore, appears to be not only distribution of equipment but also the extent of support offered until it is being used in research or in the field. MiraiBit said it collects operation data using its own robots and conducts VLA training and verification. It also listed data collection design and AI training and evaluation among the support it will provide under the agreement. This points to a service structure that links robot selection and deployment with data collection and model evaluation. However, the announcement does not specify how data will be collected using the products covered by the agreement or whether shared software and development environments will be provided across products. This highlights that breadth of equipment options and reproducibility of research across models are separate challenges. AGIBOT proposes “Worken,” a metric for measuring robots’ actual work, covered by this newspaper, introduced a framework for capturing work performed in real-world environments using measures such as the number of operating robots and autonomous operating hours. The latest announcement sets out support for deployment and research launches but does not address how operating performance will be evaluated. How to record and compare task-specific performance and operational data after equipment is delivered will be an issue in connecting research support to ongoing use in the field. NVIDIA expands Isaac, releases robot learning platform and datasets described a platform spanning data generation, simulation, training and deployment on physical robots. The latest agreement does not announce the provision of such a development platform; its focus is robot products and domestic deployment and technical support. Issues to watch include supported environments for each model, the scope of technical support, evaluation procedures after deployment and how data from physical robots will be handled. The announcement of a sales agency agreement alone does not reveal deployment track records, operating scale or terms for sharing training data.

Franka Robotics’ force-sensing arm, the Franka Research 3 (FR3), has torque sensors on all seven joints. Agile Robots offers force-control arms, the Diana 3 and Diana 7; the Thor series of industrial arms; the five-finger Agile Hand; and humanoid robots. MiraiBit will support customers from model and configuration selection through setup and the start of operations, and will provide information needed for procurement by universities and research institutions and assist with competitive quotes. The company also works on collecting operation data, training VLA (vision-language-action) models and testing on physical robots using OpenArm v2 and Unitree G1. It also plans to support data collection design, AI training and evaluation, and proof-of-concept projects.