Foxconn, Intrinsic building flexible robots for U.S. factories

Foxconn and Intrinsic, an Alphabet subsidiary specializing in robotics development tools, have announced a partnership to build AI-driven, flexible robots for Foxconn’s U.S. factories. The collaboration aims to integrate AI, robotics, and digital twins into modular automation systems to accelerate production capabilities. The joint venture will focus initially on high-value electronics assembly tasks that are difficult to automate, leveraging Intrinsic’s AI expertise and Foxconn’s global manufacturing infrastructure and Smart Manufacturing platform. A key technological component in this effort is Intrinsic’s Flowstate developer environment and the Intrinsic Vision Model (IVM), which uses advanced AI transformers for precise perception tasks such as object detection and pose estimation. IVM operates with sub-millimeter accuracy using only RGB cameras, significantly reducing hardware costs compared to traditional depth-sensing systems. This AI-driven approach is expected to make robotic workcells faster to build, cheaper to operate, and more efficient, enabling economically viable high-mix, high-volume production. Foxconn’s leadership emphasizes that