While cybersecurity threats from large language models and amoral generative AI without guardrails make front-page headlines, Japanese engineering conglomerate Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) has established a physical AI development center in San Jose, California.
The purpose of the facility is to make practical improvements in healthcare, mobility, semiconductors and other industries in collaboration with Nvidia, Analog Devices, Microsoft and Fujitsu.
Speaking at the opening ceremony on May 21, KHI CEO Yasuhiko Hashimoto said, “At the Kawasaki Physical AI Center, we will first focus on healthcare and elder care, where aging societies and labor shortages are global challenges. We will establish ‘hospital one-stop solution’ that covers the entire in-hospital experience from arrival, examination, diagnosis, and treatment, to surgery and post-care – through the integration of Physical AI and robotics.
“Simultaneously, by expanding the integration of Physical AI and robotics across a wide range of industries… we will deploy integrated solutions across diverse fields.
“What matters most is that these solutions take root on site, are used continuously, and contribute to improving the quality of healthcare. This is what we call “social implementation.” What we aim for is NOT to replace people, but to deliver Physical AI that supports human judgment and action – safely and efficiently.”
Points of collaboration include:
- Nvidia: Creation of new solutions that integrate AI and robotics technologies across diverse fields, with healthcare as the entry point
- Analog Devices: Realization of robots capable of handling a wide range of tasks by integrating AI, voice recognition, and sensing technologies
- Microsoft: Accelerating the deployment of Physical AI solutions by leveraging cloud and AI platform capabilities to help ensure reliability and scalability in real-world operations
- Fujitsu: Realization of new value creation in the healthcare domain through the integration of business systems, robotic systems, and AI
Congratulatory video messages were sent by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and professor of surgery at the University of Strasbourg, France, Dr. Jacques Marescaux.
Huang foresees “a new generation of intelligent machines” using Nvidia for AI training and simulation, and robot control: “An Nvidia Jetson would be the computer to run the AI in your robotic systems… The technology created in this lab will reach across Kawasaki’s entire product line-up.”
Marescaux, who is founder and president of the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD) in Strasbourg, France, stated that “Today, the development of AI is fantastic in surgery…[and] we know that within the next 10 or perhaps 15 years, the majority of procedures will be performed with a robot.”
Marescaux achieved international renown in 2001, when he led the team of surgeons that performed the first successful trans-Atlantic telesurgery, removing the gallbladder from a patient in Strasbourg with robot arms controlled from New York via a high-speed fiber optic link.
Based within the University Hospital of Strasbourg, IRCAD has eight “mirror institutes”, in Taiwan, China, India, Rwanda, Lebanon, the US, and two in Brazil. These are operationally independent affiliates aligned with IRCAD Strasbourg. The idea is to allow surgeons from around the world to acquire best practices in minimally invasive surgery.
The operations of KHI itself encompass aerospace, shipbuilding, power generation, plant engineering, industrial machinery, robotics and motorcycles. It possesses an extensive range of manufacturing expertise and data that it can bring to the Physical AI Center.
Kawasaki Robotics, a division of KHI, makes general-purpose industrial robots, collaborative robots, and specialized robotic systems.
The latter include silicon wafer handling and transfer robots used in semiconductor fabs, the hinotori (Firebird) surgery support robot, and a four-legged mobility robot. Hinotori was developed by Medicaroid, a joint venture between KHI and Sysmex, a Japanese medical diagnostics company.
The Kawasaki Physical AI Center will also work with KHI’s R&D centers in Japan and Europe. KHI’s first overseas R&D center, the Kawasaki Innovation Centre Europe SAS began operations at IRCAD in Strasbourg in March 2026.
It is dedicated to facilitating efficient hospital procedures by combining surgical, service and delivery robots, and a positioning system, with AI and remote operating technologies. In addition, Medicaroid operates a hinatori training center at IRCAD under its registered trademark MIL.
Robotic surgery and hospital management set standards for accuracy and reliability that physical AI must meet. Hallucinations and factual errors cannot be permitted. This should be reflected in the quality of all KHI robotics.
Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667