The welder is now a model with a laser eye
the welder is now a model with a laser eye: path robotics trained its obsidian foundation model on tens of millions of welded inches and adjusts for heat distortion in real time, while universal robots passed 75,000 deployments. fanuc is selling standardized cobot cells off the shelf.
the factory floor learned to see before it learned to think.
Context
Path Robotics announced Obsidian on Sep 8, 2025, its foundational AI model for welding; the company describes a Weld World Model, a neural network trained on high-fidelity multimodal weld data. FANUC America launched its Cobot and Go program on Jun 3, 2026 at Automate 2026, with pre-engineered cells built around its CRX cobots.
Universal Robots announced 100,000 cobots sold on Feb 24, 2025.
Obsidian as a welding model and FANUC's pre-engineered cobot cells match their sources. The 'tens of millions of welded inches' and heat distortion adjustment are not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. The sources read give Universal Robots at 100,000 cobots by Feb 2025 and 50,000 in 2020, so '75,000 deployments' does not match a figure seen.
Related work
- Path Robotics: Obsidian, foundational model for welding ↗Sep 8, 2025.
- The Robotics Media: FANUC Cobot and Go at Automate 2026 ↗Jun 3, 2026.
- Universal Robots: 100,000 cobots ↗Feb 24, 2025.
Watch next
- Check Path Robotics for the training data volume.
Sources
- Path Robotics, Obsidianpath-robotics.com
- FANUC America, Cobot and Gofanucamerica.com
- Universal Robots, 50,000 milestone, 2020universal-robots.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 2 October 2026 at 04:18 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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