cs.ROMar 6, 2026

Robotic Foundation Models for Industrial Control: A Comprehensive Survey and Readiness Assessment Framework

Authors: David Kube, Simon Hadwiger, Tobias Meisen

Organizations: Factory Automation, Siemens AG, Gleiwitzer Straße 555, Nuremberg, 90475, Germany. · Institute for Technologies and Management of Digital Transformation, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Gaußstraße 20, Wuppertal, 42119, Germany.

Abstract

Robotic foundation models (RFMs) are emerging as a promising route towards flexible, instruction- and demonstration-driven robot control, however, a critical investigation of their industrial applicability is still lacking. This survey gives an extensive overview over the RFM-landscape and analyses, driven by concrete implications, how industrial domains and use cases shape the requirements of RFMs, with particular focus on collaborative robot platforms, heterogeneous sensing and actuation, edge-computing constraints, and safety-critical operation. We synthesise industrial deployment perspectives into eleven interdependent implications and operationalise them into an assessment framework comprising a catalogue of 149 concrete criteria, spanning both model capabilities and ecosystem requirements. Using this framework, we evaluate 324 manipulation-capable RFMs via 48,276 criterion-level decisions obtained via a conservative LLM-assisted evaluation pipeline, validated against expert judgements. The results indicate that industrial maturity is limited and uneven: even the highest-rated models satisfy only a fraction of criteria and typically exhibit narrow implication-specific peaks rather than integrated coverage. We conclude that progress towards industry-grade RFMs depends less on isolated benchmark successes than on systematic incorporation of safety, real-time feasibility, robust perception, interaction, and cost-effective system integration into auditable deployment stacks.

Figures & tables

Appendix figures & tables14 assets

Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.

Appendix

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Foundation-Model-Based Agents in Industrial Automation: Purposes, Capabilities, and Open Challenges

    May 4, 2026Vincent Henkel, Felix Gehlhoff, David Kube +13Industrial AutomationAI Agent Evaluation

  2. How Should I Pick a Foundation Model for My Robot? In Favor of a Community Evaluation Framework for Social Robots

    Aug 7, 2026Eric Nichols, Alva Markelius, Hatice GunesRobot Foundation ModelsHuman-Robot Interaction

  3. Verifiable Foundation Models for Robot Safety

    Jun 22, 2026Davide Corsi, Kyungmin Kim, Roy FoxRobot Policy LearningRobot Foundation Models