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 shopper 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 shortly. Intrinsic stated the robots might be used for duties corresponding to meeting, inspection, machine tending, and logistics, aiming to maneuver Foxconn past inflexible, hard-coded automation.
After years of exploring AI-driven manufacturing unit ideas, they stated advances in AI make this the correct time to formalize a three way partnership.
“Collectively we’re working to convey 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 amenities, and imaginative and prescient for the way forward for manufacturing, we’ll speed up the adoption of AI the place it’s most wanted and precious immediately. 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 might be used. Intrinsic highlighted AI server manufacturing as a possible activity to focus on. The businesses will mix the strengths of Intrinsic’s AI and Foxconn’s Good Manufacturing platform to develop workcells to suit Foxconn’s wants.
Intrinsic stated the three way partnership will begin with high-value electronics meeting duties that stay exhausting to automate. The businesses goal to construct modular, AI-driven industrial robotic workcells utilizing imaginative and prescient, movement, greedy, and contact to deal with and insert components and parts.
“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 unit of the long run,” Younger Liu, Chairman and CEO of Foxconn, stated.
AI will play an vital function
Intrinsic Flowstate, a robotics developer surroundings, 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 set of specialised transformers to deal with notion duties corresponding to pose and object detection, monitoring, segmentation, and point-cloud era. It requires no coaching pipelines and desires solely a single CAD file to run.
Intrinsic stated 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 reduce {hardware} prices by 5 to twenty occasions in contrast with typical depth-sensing setups. Intrinsic added that high-precision imaginative and prescient fashions additionally enhance associated features, together with movement and grasp planning, by offering extra correct information all through the workcell.
Foxconn and Intrinsic stated working collectively will unlock AI-enabled robots which might be quicker to construct, cheaper to run, and extra environment friendly in operation. Finally, the businesses stated this could make high-mix, high-volume manufacturing economically and technically viable.
“Intrinsic has led the best way in relation 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 Good Manufacturing platform will allow clever automation totally throughout our factories, from information administration to robotics, AI, and digital twins,” stated Dr. Zhe Shi, chief digital officer at Foxconn. “This partnership will assist revolutionize our manufacturing unit operations, making them much more versatile, adaptable, skill-based, and scalable. From particular person duties on the robotic stage, to full manufacturing traces and plant administration, we’re excited to be constructing the manufacturing unit of the long run collectively.”
Intrinsic Flowstate is a developer surroundings to construct production-grade robotics. | Supply: Intrinsic
