GelSight and Flexxbotics collaborate on precision robotic inspection and autonomous process control

BOSTON – September 5, 2024 – Flexxbotics, a provider of digital solutions for high-volume robotic manufacturing, announced a new partnership with GelSight, a pioneer in tactile intelligence technology, to deliver a joint robot-enabled nondestructive testing (NDT) solution with autonomous process control. The joint solution features GelSight’s tactile sensing technology in Flexxbotics to deliver advanced robotic machine handling with high-precision quality control and digital thread tracking, reducing inspection time by 40% or more.

Next-generation smart factories—in aerospace, defense, medical devices, automotive, and other industries where measurement accuracy is critical to tight-tolerance processing—can now leverage industrial robots and collaborative robots to dramatically speed up inspection processes, increase throughput, and improve margins. GelSight’s unique technology uses 3D imaging to map surface finish and defects on any material, anywhere, down to the micron level. With GelSight touch-enabled measurement devices from Flexxbotics, companies can quickly take hundreds of precise measurements during on-line processing, as opposed to transporting parts to specialized lab equipment or relying on outside lab services.

Flexxbotics provides interoperable communication between robots and GelSight devices, coordinating the entire process and connecting directly to existing plant business systems, including CAD/PLM, QMS, IIoT and more, to ensure closed-loop quality compliance. Geometry Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) for each part is automatically entered by Flexxbotics directly into the robot and GelSight programs, ensuring the integrity of critical feature measurement with inspection results collected for nonconformance tracking and analysis. Optionally, data can be sent to quality repositories and MES systems. Flexxbotics also sends defect alerts via text and email, and previous operations receive escalations to identify root cause and process corrections based on autonomous process control instructions from Flexxbotics.

“GelSight and Flexxbotics together deliver a new level of inspection efficiency, waste reduction and cost savings through the use of tactile sensors and manufacturing robotics,” said GelSight CEO Youssef Benmokhtar. “Now, even the most difficult to accurately measure dimensions can be consistently inspected in a fraction of the time using robotics.”

“We believe that robotic manufacturing is the future, and our partnership with GelSight combines some of the most advanced automated inspection capabilities in the world with Flexxbotics’ orchestration of manufacturing robotics to deliver the next level of factory autonomy,” explained Tyler Bouchard, CEO and co-founder of Flexxbotics. “Using GelSight’s tactile sensors for in-process inspection enables robots to achieve micron-scale accuracy, delivering autonomous process control with Flexxbotics for the most complex part geometries.”

To learn more, visit the GelSight booth at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS 2024) from September 9 to 14, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois, USA: McCormick Place, East Building, Level 3 – 134260 – Quality Assurance.

About Gelsight

GelSight is a pioneer in digital, image-based tactile intelligence. Its proprietary technology, invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides extremely detailed and rapid surface characterization, enabling a wide range of surface measurement applications and robotic sensing capabilities. Its elastomeric 3D imaging systems are currently used in aerospace, automotive, forensics, and many robotics research labs worldwide. GelSight is Digital Touch and Feel.

About Flexxbotics

Flexxbotics enables robot-driven production at scale. Flexxbotics solution digitizes robotic production with autonomous process control for next-generation smart factory environments. Flexxbotics breakthrough, unique FlexxCORE technology, seamlessly connects and coordinates robots with existing automation equipment, IT systems, and people. More efficient, flexible, and open, Flexxbotics revolutionizes the use of robotics in complex manufacturing.