Just Now: Anthropic Releases Physical MCP — Claude Begins to Take Over the Real World

This Thursday, Anthropic announced the launch of an MCP for hardware: the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), a new standard designed to help AI agents driven by all large models safely and quickly operate physical devices.

Now, large models such as Claude can operate hardware including microscopes, robotic arms, liquid handlers, and lasers in the physical world in the same way they use MCP (Model Context Protocol). The development is seen by the industry as a key step for AI from the digital world into the physical world.

People who use agents have likely heard of MCP, an open standard protocol launched by Anthropic in November 2024, intended to provide a standardized, secure bidirectional communication interface between large language models (LLMs) and external data sources, local files, development tools, and various application services.

MCP's core positioning is the "USB-C interface for the AI field," connecting large models with software environments such as GitHub, Slack, local file systems, and databases. With the development of AI technology in recent years, MCP has evolved into an indispensable de facto standard across the agent ecosystem.

Now Anthropic also hopes, through the MCP for hardware, to elevate this standard communication specification to physical hardware, sensors, embedded systems, and test equipment.