Foxconn, a Taiwan-based manufacturing partner that includes Apple and Nvidia, and Alphabet Inc.’s AI and robotics company Intrinsic are investing in a joint venture to bring robots to Foxconn’s U.S. factories, according to a statement from Intrinsic released Thursday evening.
“Foxconn has tremendous manufacturing expertise,” said Intrinsic CEO Wendy Tan White. luck In an interview. He added that Foxconn, perhaps best known for its work assembling Apple’s iPhones, will learn which parts of the manufacturing process can best be improved with AI.
Intrinsic is a graduate of Alphabet’s Moonshot program, which focuses on developing breakthrough new technologies. Developers have worked on ways to make industrial robots easier and cheaper to use. Alphabet debuted the company as a separate company in 2021.
In particular, Intrinsic focuses on developing flexible manufacturing, or automated systems that can respond to new data, self-optimize, and adapt the way they operate. Currently, industrial robots are best applied to predetermined tasks, but this is difficult.
Changing the system is costly. That’s why human labor remains a better option in many situations for manufacturers who need flexibility.
White said Intrinsic and Foxconn have been in talks for “probably a year or two” and it was “inevitable” that the electronics manufacturing giant wanted to work with Intrinsic on software and AI development.
“Working with Intrinsic allows us to leverage their deep expertise in AI-driven robotics,” Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said in a statement. “This synergy complements our global manufacturing leadership and enables us to work together to unlock the factory of the future.”
In late October, Foxconn (officially known as Honghai Technology Group) announced it would install robots at a new Houston factory that produces Nvidia server racks. Foxconn is also working with Nvidia to develop medical robots for hospitals in Taiwan.
Taiwanese companies are also collaborating with mainland Chinese robotics companies. Foxconn executives announced in January that robots from Shenzhen-based UBTech would be installed in factories in mainland China.
White declined to say how much money Intrinsic and Foxconn had contributed to the joint venture, but did share that the effort is “not a pilot.”
asian robot
Initiatives like Intrinsic’s new joint venture are part of a growing focus on “physical AI,” or AI models applied to the real world rather than the purely digital world of software.
White suggested that some of the interest in robotics is a result of coronavirus-era supply shocks and a recognition by companies that they need to bring more manufacturing domestically. However, factories cannot easily scale up production because manufacturing expertise is lost in developed countries.
Robotics has the potential to solve the problem of a shrinking manufacturing workforce in a number of ways. “What is interesting and encouraging is that suppliers within the manufacturing supply chain, such as machine shops, are realizing that bringing AI and robotics back into the conversation will bring young people back into these industries,” White suggested.
Asia is leading the way in the field of industrial robots due to its combination of technological expertise and manufacturing footprint. Other companies are also eyeing the area. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang touted South Korea as a future hub for this new technology.
“South Korea builds robots, and those robots can build more robots and work in more factories,” Huang told reporters in late October, shortly after the U.S. chipmaker announced it would ship tens of thousands of GPUs to South Korean companies such as Hyundai and Samsung.
However, the biggest player in this field is China, which produces more than half of the world’s industrial robots. Companies like Hangzhou-based Unitree are now rapidly developing new humanoid robots.
“They’ve been producing for a long time, so they have the skills and expertise,” White said. “I won’t ignore it.”
