Launches, releases, funding and papers about agents doing hardware work.
Newest first, as we log them.
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21 d ago
In September Nordic Semiconductor added skills to its Nordic MCP server that drive a Power Profiler Kit II and SEGGER J-Link probes. The PPK2 skill captures long measurement runs and flags anomalies against a reference pattern; the debug skill runs GDB sessions. The nRF Connect extension for VS Code now shares build context. The post shows no runs.
29 d ago
AMD introduced Ross on 30 September, an agentic assistant for development on its FPGAs, adaptive SoCs and embedded x86 processors. AMD says Ross pairs MCP servers for its tools such as Vivado and Vitis HLS with expert-written agent skills and a documentation search. It runs in clients such as Claude Code or Cursor. The launch video shows no hardware run.
43 d ago
Lattice Semiconductor released Lattice Prompt, a free MCP link between agentic IDEs such as Claude Code or Cursor and its Radiant FPGA software. Lattice says an agent can run simulation, synthesis, place and route, timing analysis and bitstream generation from plain-language requests, grounded in its datasheets. The 16 September release reports productivity gains of 10x or more without a benchmark.
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.
2 mo ago
Anthropic opened a research preview of the Model Hardware Standard, a shared driver spec for agents that operate lab and manufacturing devices. Each device describes its settings and enforced safety limits, and agents reach it over MCP, a CLI or code. In a QuEra case study, an agent-improved laser relock script worked in 99.3% of 700 trials.
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.
2 mo ago
Daniel Frassinelli of Veecle reviewed first-party hardware MCP servers and found that seven chip and tooling vendors shipped them between October 2025 and August 2026. He found no official server from ST, Infineon or Renesas. He writes that none of the vendor servers runs firmware without a physical board; Veecle's own product, Chiplab, targets that gap.
2 mo ago
Arduino released App Lab 0.10 with Agentic Mode, which connects a bring-your-own-key model to an UNO Q project through MCP and the App CLI. Claude is the first supported provider. The agent can create and edit files, run and stop the App and read errors as they happen. The post does not show it reaching the board's pins directly.
2 mo ago
Flux added a public MCP server to its PCB design tool in its summer update. External agents such as Claude, Cursor and Codex can query a board's live context and drive design changes. The post gives firmware headers generated from actual pin assignments and net names as one use. The update also adds a lower-cost chat mode.
3 mo ago
Researchers had coding agents write robot behavior trees from a contract served by a robot-side MCP server. The contract lists the robot's skills, allowed operators and optional templates, and a gate validates each tree before it runs. The paper reports tests of Sonnet 4.6 and Gemma4:31b on 110 simulated tasks and 14 on a Husarion Panther running Nav2.
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
Memfault released an MCP server with 12 read-only tools covering devices, issues, metrics and software versions. In the launch post, Claude Code finds the day's worst new crash, matches its stack trace to the checked-out firmware and drafts a fix. A GitHub MCP server opens the pull request. Memfault says the tools cannot change devices or trigger OTA updates.
5 mo ago
Nordic Semiconductor released 2 MCP servers that connect coding assistants such as Claude Code to its SDK and cloud. The Nordic MCP server adds documentation search, an nrfutil reference, a UART monitor script and SDK workflow commands. The nRF Cloud server reads fleet data such as logs and coredumps, without write access. The post shows no hardware runs.
5 mo ago
Keysight has released version 0.1 of its MCP Server for Instrument Control as a Windows executable. The release notes list 18 tools that discover VISA instruments, resolve SCPI commands from each instrument's definition file and run them. An engineer approves a plain-language preview of every command before it reaches hardware. Sessions are logged, and a simulation mode needs no instruments.
