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Flexiv is a global manufacturer of adaptive industrial robotic arms. Its first product, Rizon launched in 2019 at the Hannover Messe Exhibition. The company has headquarters in the US and China with over 80 employees (2019) and strategic partnerships around the world.

History
Flexiv Ltd. is a leading global robotics and AI company, focusing on developing and manufacturing adaptive robots which integrate force control, computer vision and AI technologies. Flexiv provides innovative turnkey solutions and services based on Flexiv robotic systems to customers across multiple industries. Flexiv was founded in 2016, with a core team from the robotics and AI laboratories at Stanford University.

Flexiv Ltd. now has more than 80 full-time employees. As a global high-tech company, it has attracted a great number of top engineers and scientists from Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, SJTU, ZJU, THU, and experienced talent from well-known robotics and hardware companies including KUKA, FANUC, ABB, Intuitive Surgical and Apple.

Products
Flexiv continues to design and develop the next generation of robot which has evolved beyond the traditional position controlled or even the more modern “collaborative” robots. Flexiv’s Rizon is defining a new category of robot designed with intrinsic safety and yet without compromising performance. Rizon is defined as an “Adaptive Robot” because it can perform tasks that traditional robots can’t, making it perfect to automate intricate tasks in complicated and/or harmful work environments.

Rizon has three distinctive characteristics that establish its classification as an Adaptive Robot:


 * High tolerance for position variance: Ability to perform tasks despite uncertainty in positioning (e.g. manufacture or mounting tolerance of work-piece, accumulated position error in production line).


 * Disturbance rejection: Ability to maintain performance even amid significant changes in the environment (e.g. floating base, vibration, human interference).


 * Transferable intelligence: Ability to handle a wide variation of similar tasks and supports rapid redeployment to new tasks.

From a technology perspective, Rizon uses force control and hierarchical intelligence to enable all the functionality of the Adaptive Robot. Rizon leverages an advanced, whole-body force control algorithm. It features completely re-designed force/torque sensors, customized control hardware and novel joint assembly design specifically optimized for the best torque control operation.

Rizon leverages hierarchical intelligence so that it understands how to utilize force control with the integration of other information. The lowest layer of intelligence controls the basic motion of the arm and maintains stability, the mid layer intelligence encodes a different sequence of motions, while the highest layer of intelligence takes care of perception, understanding, planning and other complicated cognitive tasks. Each layer of intelligence is relatively independent from the others. For example, lower level intelligence cannot directly affect higher-level intelligence. The output of higher-level intelligence is implemented in the lower level. Each lower level is instructed and tuned by its direct upper level.

Timeline
2016 - Flexiv was founded by a group of PhDs and postdocs from Stanford University.

2019 - Flexiv has concluded a total funding of more than 22M USD by top-tier VCs, such as GSR Ventures, Gaorong Capital, etc.

2019 - Flexiv ushered in a new generation of industrial robot with the launch of its new robot, Rizon, at the annual Hannover Messe trade fair.