Younger Liu, Chairman of Hon Hai Expertise Group (Foxconn), and Wendy Tan White, CEO of Intrinsic. | Supply: Intrinsic
Intrinsic and Foxconn are teaming as much as construct robots for Foxconn’s U.S. factories. Intrinsic is an Alphabet subsidiary that builds robotics growth instruments, whereas Foxconn is the world’s largest contract producer for client electronics. The partnership was introduced at Foxconn’s Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei.
The businesses plan to combine AI, robotics, and digital twins into modular automation and transfer into manufacturing rapidly. Intrinsic mentioned the robots can be used for duties reminiscent of meeting, inspection, machine tending, and logistics, aiming to maneuver Foxconn past inflexible, hard-coded automation.
After years of exploring AI-driven manufacturing facility ideas, they mentioned advances in AI make this the correct time to formalize a three way partnership.
“Collectively we’re working to deliver the worth of AI into the bodily world,” Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White advised The Robotic Report. “By marrying Intrinsic’s experience in AI-driven robotics software program with Foxconn’s deep experience with worldwide manufacturing, world-class services, and imaginative and prescient for the way forward for manufacturing, we are going to speed up the adoption of AI the place it’s most wanted and beneficial right now. The partnership with Foxconn offers an unimaginable alternative to scale these options broadly.”
What do Foxconn and Intrinsic plan to create?
Intrinsic wouldn’t specify what precisely is being constructed or what robots can be used. Intrinsic highlighted AI server manufacturing as a possible job to focus on. The businesses will mix the strengths of Intrinsic’s AI and Foxconn’s Sensible Manufacturing platform to develop workcells to suit Foxconn’s wants.
Intrinsic mentioned the three way partnership will begin with high-value electronics meeting duties that stay arduous to automate. The businesses intention to construct modular, AI-driven industrial robotic workcells utilizing imaginative and prescient, movement, greedy, and contact to deal with and insert elements and elements.
“In working with Intrinsic, we’re in a position to faucet their deep experience in AI-driven robotics. This synergy enhances our world manufacturing management, enabling us to collaboratively unlock the manufacturing facility of the long run,” Younger Liu, Chairman and CEO of Foxconn, mentioned.
AI will play an necessary function
Intrinsic Flowstate, a robotics developer setting, will give the groups a shared platform to make use of instruments such because the Intrinsic Imaginative and prescient Mannequin (IVM). IVM makes use of a collection of specialised transformers to deal with notion duties reminiscent of pose and object detection, monitoring, segmentation, and point-cloud technology. It requires no coaching pipelines and desires solely a single CAD file to run.
Intrinsic mentioned basis fashions like IVM can enhance the economics of AI-driven robotics for Foxconn. IVM delivers sub-millimeter accuracy utilizing solely RGB cameras, which Intrinsic claims can lower {hardware} prices by 5 to twenty instances in contrast with typical depth-sensing setups. Intrinsic added that high-precision imaginative and prescient fashions additionally increase associated capabilities, together with movement and grasp planning, by offering extra correct knowledge all through the workcell.
Foxconn and Intrinsic mentioned working collectively will unlock AI-enabled robots which might be sooner to construct, cheaper to run, and extra environment friendly in operation. In the end, the businesses mentioned this may make high-mix, high-volume manufacturing economically and technically viable.
“Intrinsic has led the best way with regards to constructing an AI-integrated platform and AI-enabled robotic capabilities that may scale. In working collectively, we’ll be capable of guarantee Foxconn’s Sensible Manufacturing platform will allow clever automation absolutely throughout our factories, from knowledge administration to robotics, AI, and digital twins,” mentioned Dr. Zhe Shi, chief digital officer at Foxconn. “This partnership will assist revolutionize our manufacturing facility operations, making them much more versatile, adaptable, skill-based, and scalable. From particular person duties on the robotic degree, to full manufacturing traces and plant administration, we’re excited to be constructing the manufacturing facility of the long run collectively.”
Intrinsic Flowstate is a developer setting to construct production-grade robotics. | Supply: Intrinsic
