Microsoft Research

Microsoft's fundamental research arm, which released the Phi-derived robotics model Rho-alpha in 2026.

Microsoft Research was founded in 1991, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with labs around the world, including Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing. It has a long track record in fundamental research on computer vision and multimodal models, producing work such as the vision model Florence-2 and the multimodal agent model Magma. In January 2026 it released Rho-alpha (ρα), Microsoft's first robotics model derived from its Phi family of vision-language models (its earlier Magma model could already do some robot manipulation); Rho-alpha turns natural-language instructions into control signals for dual-arm manipulation, takes touch as an input alongside vision, and can keep learning from corrections made during human teleoperation while deployed. It is one example of a big tech company extending a general-purpose multimodal model into robot control.

ExampleRho-alpha: derived from the Phi vision-language model, it takes images, touch, and language instructions as input and outputs dual-arm manipulation actions.

Also called

MSR

Related

Rho-alpha · Magma (Microsoft) · Florence-2 · Vision-Language-Action Model · Tactile Sensor · Teleoperation

Sources

Rho-Alpha - Microsoft Foundry Labs
Microsoft Research Unveils Rho-Alpha Robotics Model (Pulse 2.0)

As of

2026-01