Launches, releases, funding and papers about agents doing hardware work.
Newest first, as we log them.
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45 d ago
Asraful Haque and colleagues released an open-source toolkit for agent-driven RHEED (reflection high-energy electron diffraction) on a pulsed laser deposition system. It adds programmable electron-optics control, automatic beam alignment and rocking-curve capture, with analysis served over MCP. The paper describes a demo driven by natural-language requests. We found no code link.
49 d ago
SEGGER and Embedder announced on 10 September that Embedder's firmware agent can now drive J-Link and J-Trace debug probes. The announcement says the agent loads builds, sets breakpoints, reads registers and memory and watches RTT output, then keeps debugging on the target until the code works. It gives no availability date or price.
51 d ago
Copperhead launched on Hacker News as an agentic circuit-board design tool that compiles designs to KiCad files and manufacturing outputs. The founder writes that it works on its own hardware representation instead of editing KiCad directly. The thread drew 250 points. No board made with Copperhead was shown, and assembled-board ordering is still planned.
2 mo ago
Zahra Ayar, Georg Fantner and colleagues published a paper on three MCP-connected agents that run an atomic force microscope. One converts plain-language requests to checked commands, one judges image quality and retunes imaging, and one diagnoses artifacts. In live experiments, the paper says, the tuning agent did as well as expert operators. No code is linked.
3 mo ago
FWAuto's 3.6-minute video runs its own firmware agent through an STM32 edge-AI job on an STM32F4DISCOVERY board. The agent checks the toolchain, integrates an existing NanoEdge AI library, and builds and flashes over ST-LINK. From 02:52 it verifies gestures on the board and writes an evidence report. Model training is outside the demo's scope.
3 mo ago
Cadence announced the AuraStack AI Super Agent, an agentic platform in Allegro AI Studio for PCB and advanced packaging design. It coordinates domain agents from system planning through place and route, manufacturability checks and multiphysics signoff, on the same architecture as Cadence's ChipStack agent. Cadence says it will be available in 2026 and cites 2X faster time to market.
4 mo ago
Researchers put an LLM agent in charge of a trapped-ion experiment's ARTIQ control code through an MCP server. Every tool call needs a token bound to its contents, issued by a human or after a simulated run stays within device limits. The paper reports that the agent built a calibration stack and, with operator guidance, closed a magnetic-field stabilization loop.
5 mo ago
Chunhui Li and Wei Fan describe RFIA, an RF instrument agent whose LLM plans while a deterministic runtime operates the instrument. A knowledge base supplies verified skills, workflow templates and SCPI command lookup. On a commercial vector network analyzer, the paper reports all 16 benchmark tasks handled with both MiniMax-M2.7 and Qwen3.6-27B, including 1 expected safety rejection.
5 mo ago
Penglin Dai and co-authors describe AutoMCU, an LLM multi-agent system that designs neural networks to fit a microcontroller's RAM and flash limits. Vendor toolchain checks reject candidates that would not fit before any training. The paper reports competitive CIFAR accuracy after 1 to 2 hours of customization and tests on several STM32 parts; no code is linked.
5 mo ago
Craig Schindler, CTO of Assemble Labs, describes how the company has AI agents write experiments for embedded devices and interpret sensor and power data. The 10-minute interview was recorded at NVIDIA GTC 2026. His main case study is a wearable health sensor, including how power regressions are found and fixed. The video shows no bench footage of the agents.
5 mo ago
Root Access, a US maker of electronics for drones and robots, opened its Seb coding agent to the public on 8 May. In a Show HN post, founding engineer Vignesh K, a former TI applications engineer, says Seb reads schematics, datasheets and BOMs, mixes deterministic algorithms with LLM calls and connects to debuggers and logs. We saw no demo.
7 mo ago
AllSpice published a paper on DRCY, a multi-agent LLM system that checks schematic connections pin by pin against component datasheets. It runs as a CI/CD action when an engineer submits a design review on AllSpice Hub and posts inline comments. A consensus agent reconciles repeated runs. The authors say it runs in production; the paper gives no accuracy figures.
14 mo ago
Embedder launched its firmware coding agent on Hacker News on 15 August 2025 with a demo adding a magnetometer to a Pebble 2 Duo. Founders Bob Wei and Ethan Gibbs said it reads uploaded datasheets and schematics, checks output over a serial console and steps through code with GDB. SEGGER announced J-Link and J-Trace probe access in September 2026.
15 mo ago
BootLoop, a Y Combinator Summer 2025 startup founded by Noah Pacik-Nelson and Chris Markus, is building an AI agent that writes and tests firmware. The company says the agent reads datasheets and schematics, then validates code on customer boards with oscilloscopes, logic analyzers and debug probes. In pilots, its own engineers run the agent and a person reviews every line.
