Flexiv shows force-controlled robots at IROS 2026

Flexiv's appearance at IROS 2026, which finished yesterday, marked its push to position force control as the missing piece in real-world robotics. The company's CTO, Xiyang Yeh, used a Tuesday Tech Talk Stage presentation titled "Mastering Contact in Real-World Applications" to argue that ultra-sensitive touch capabilities are what allow robots to work in unstructured environments. The booth demonstrations translated that argument into hardware: a teleoperation kit with two Rizon 4 arms offering bi-directional force feedback, the Enlight robot with sensors in every joint, and a MICO system installing a GPU into a high-density server.

The range of platforms on display, from the industry-focused MICO Core to the hospitality-oriented MICO Ultra and the AICO-2 dual-arm mobile robot, suggests Flexiv is betting that the same force-control foundation can serve very different markets. Marking its inaugural IROS attendance, Enlight was presented as the centerpiece of that strategy, combining whole-body touch sensitivity with 720-degree rotation on four axes.

Whether this translates into adoption likely hinges on how these systems perform outside controlled demonstrations. For manufacturers and service operators weighing dual-arm robots, the test will be whether force-controlled assembly and close-proximity collaboration hold up in daily production, not just on the exhibition floor.