Mission
Humanity is facing the beginning of an unprecedented labour shortage. Today’s AI and robotics are already doing what they can to automating software, vision, and even driving but lack a robust way of interacting with the physical world – a tactile intelligence.
We rely on human hands to care for us when we’re sick and as we age, handle and ship goods to us, assemble many of the goods we use, and even harvest and process our food. Over the next decade, the US alone will have a shortage of 23,000 surgeons, 330,000 warehouse workers, and 2,100,000 skilled manufacturing workers.
Forcen exists to create the tactile intelligence that will allow robotics and AI companies to tackle these shortages and to make this tactile intelligence as scalable, simple to implement, and capable as possible.
History
Forcen was founded in late 2015 with the initial goal of creating a force/torque sensing system that could match human capability across sensitivity, size, and adaptability and expand on human potential in scalability, durability, and environmental resistance. The first generation of hardware was completed in 2017 and integrated in surgical robotics across multiple specialities. These first generation systems allowed surgical robotics to match the sensitivity of surgeon’s touch and even exceed it – this allowed for scaling down of fine movements and amplification of superhuman touch sensitivity.
The sensitivity, reliability, and compactness created for the early surgical robotics market found new applications with the widespread adoption of AI & machine vision into logistics and industrial robotics in 2019. This second generation system built upon the sensing systems of the first with an edge computing intelligence – this enabled plug-and-play integration and created synthetic reflexes and muscle memory to begin matching the flexibility of the human motor cortex.
Today, Forcen’s 3rd generation architecture continues to push the boundaries of robotic potential in field, agriculture/food, and space robotics.
Investors & Accelerators
