Anthropic Releases Open Hardware Standard Enabling AI Agents to Control Physical Devices

Anthropic has published the Open Physical Agent Standard (OPAS), a secure communications protocol enabling Claude and autonomous agents to safely control physical machinery.

Anthropic today announced the Open Physical Agent Standard (OPAS), an open-source hardware specification and API layer designed to bridge software AI agents with physical hardware actuators, robotics, and edge sensors.

The protocol provides zero-trust authentication, cryptographic hardware kill-switches, and low-latency safety boundaries. This allows LLM-driven agents to read telemetry and send control directives directly to robotic arms and lab automation equipment.

Industrial partners including Siemens and ABB have announced initial compliance tests, paving the way for autonomous physical agents operating in manufacturing and laboratory environments.