AI, sensor developer Forcen closes CA$8.35 million funding round

Toronto, Canada-based robotics sensor and edge AI provider Forcen recently announced it closed a $8.35 million Canadian dollars - or approximately $6.12 million United States dollars - funding round.

The round was co-led by Brightspark Ventures and BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund with participation by Garage Capital and MaRS IAF, and returning investors including EmergingVC.

Forcen said it will use this investment to scale up prototype production facilities to support more customers and continue developing its force/torque sensing technology and edge AI.

Founded in 2015, the company said it creates force/torque sensing components and edge AI software systems designed to enable robot companies to deploy robotic manipulation in complex and unstructured applications.

“Robotic vision has undergone a revolution over the past decade and is continuing to accelerate with new AI approaches,” said Mark Skapinker, Brightspark Ventures co-founder and partner. “We expect robotic manipulation to quickly follow in the footsteps of robotic vision.”

Forcen to scale beyond custom design with new development options

Forcen said its technology is already moving into production for customers in surgical, logistics, and aerospace robotics.

“We’re excited for our customers to announce the robots they’ve been working on with our technology,” said Robert Brooks, Forcen CEO and founder. “Providing custom solutions has limited the number of customers we take on, but now we’re working to change that.”

To accelerate development for current customers and allow more robotics companies to start working with Forcen’s technology earlier on, the company is launching a customizable offering as well as off-the-shelf development kits.

Forcen will launch its off-the-shelf development kits starting October 2024, adding to its collection of force/torque sensing components and systems. Source: Forcen

The customizable offering will use generative design and standard subassemblies to allow customers to select the size, sensing range and sensitivity, overload protection, mounting bolt pattern, connector type, and connector location, with fulfillment in as little as four to six weeks. Forcen said its new process will replace the traditional catalog of sensors while allowing customers to get exactly what they need for their specific application.

Off-the-shelf development kits will be launched in October, covering three and six degrees of freedom (DOF) force/torque sensors as well as cross-roller bearing free three DOF joint torque sensors and three DOF gripper fingers.

AI, sensor technology for less-structured robotics applications

Forcen said complex and less-structured robotics applications are challenging for conventional force/torque sensing technologies because of the risk of repeated impact and overload, wide temperature ranges or changes, and extreme constraints on size and weight.

These applications are becoming increasingly common, such as with surgical, logistics, humanoid, quadrupedal, aerospace, agriculture, food and beverage, and underwater robotics.

Forcen said its full stack force/torque sensing systems are designed for these complex and less-structured applications using three core proprietary technologies:

• ForceFilm - A monolithic thin-film transducer enabling sensing systems that are light, thin, stable across both drift and temperature, and scalable, especially for multi-dimensional sensing.
• DedicatedOverload - A dedicated overload protection structure that acts as a six DOF hard stop. This dedicated protection structure provides sensitivity and overload protection to be designed separately and enables durable use of the overload structure for thousands of overload events while still achieving millions of sensing cycles.
• Synap - Forcen’s on-board edge intelligence. This edge intelligence comes factory compensated and calibrated with network connection to any standard digital bus (USB, CAN, Ethernet, EtherCAT) to create a full-stack force/torque sensing solution that is plug-and-play with low maintenance or calibration operation.