Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard (MHS): a USB-C connector for AI agents in meatspace.

Anthropic’s Model Hardware Standard is an interface for connecting AI agents to physical devices such as robot arms or microscopes. Currently, it supports devices such as robot arms, microscopes, quantum computers, and liquid dispensers, and allows agents to run continuously and sometimes self-repair after hardware issues.

It aims to be the “USB-C of the physical world”, allowing device manufacturers to plug into one standard once they get access to the source code. It is model agnostic and so should work for any model including non-Claude models, enabling the automation of laboratories and industrial robots among other things.