Iván Hernández Dalas: Autonomique deploys semi-humanoid robots and AI at Canadian Tier 1
Autonomique’s AI platform and mobile manipulator are moving from the lab into factories. Source: Autonomique
Manufacturers face persistent labor shortages, rising costs, and growing production complexity. However, traditional automation, built for fixed and repetitive tasks, often struggles to adapt, according to Autonomique Inc. The company today said that its physical AI platform, which is designed to address this challenge, is progressing toward production deployment at Tier 1 automotive supplier F&P Manufacturing Inc.
“There is enormous excitement in robotics today, but most of it remains demo-grade: systems that look impressive yet routinely fail under real production demands,” stated Vikrant Tomar, co-founder and CEO of Autonomique. “Manufacturing demands precision, repeatability, and zero tolerance for fragility. We built Autonomique to close that gap; our intelligence layer brings genuine adaptability to industrial robotics without sacrificing the reliability manufacturers depend on.”
Tomar has a Ph.D. in AI and was previously founder and chief technology officer of Fluent.ai. Spun out of SRI International in 2024, Autonomique said it has developed hardware-agnostic software to add human-like dexterity and reasoning to industrial robots.
“Some of the technologies that we license out of SRI include its teleop system that was already being used by U.S. Army for bomb disposal, as well as by some pharma companies in their cleanrooms,” Tomar told The Robot Report. “The idea is to be able to integrate into any type of robotic embodiment, get control data, and train AI models with that. The second component is a more generalized foundational spatial understanding and reasoning engine, allowing a robot to understand the world and think about it.”
Autonomique uses teleoperation based on SRI research. Source: Autonomique
Autonomique designs AI for factory flexibility
Autonomique said its staffers have deep backgrounds in robotics engineering, AI, and product development. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company said its autonomy platform has a “generalist-specialist” architecture enabling industrial robots to perceive, reason, and execute multi-step workflows while adapting quickly to new tasks without major retraining.
“Instead of having one large vision-language-action [VLA] model, we’re building this framework where the generalist AI can choose a deterministic skill for a task,” Tomar explained. “For insertion, for example, it’s better to use online reinforcement learning, but for when failures or other types of things happen, maybe I should use these more flexible, newer VLA models. So our AI decides that on the fly and chooses the right skill.”
The result is human-like adaptability with the cycle time, reliability, precision, and scrap-reduction targets required in real production environments, claimed Autonomique.
As a hardware-agnostic platform, each deployment creates a blueprint for scaling across additional tasks, lines, and sites. Autonomique claimed that its training from real-world data enables rapid, cost-effective automation across automotive, electronics, and aerospace manufacturing.
“Our framework doesn’t care about the type of grippers you have,” Tomar said. “Some people are spending a lot of money on things like robotic hands, but there are use cases where you need to be able to switch across different things or pick up flat metal parts, where a magnet would be better than fingers.”
The company is already working with robot arms from Denso, Staubli, and RealMan Robotics and is building partnerships with Holiday Robotics, Rainbow Robotics, and several North American companies. It is having discussions with humanoid robot developers, but Tomar said they’re not yet ready for market.
Autonomique takes a ‘generalist-specialist’ approach to physical AI for manufacturing. Source: Autonomique
F&P moves from pilot toward global rollout
Tottenham, Canada-based F&P Mfg. specializes in chassis and suspension systems for automakers including Honda, Toyota, and General Motors. The company is a subsidiary of F.tech Inc., a publicly traded, Japan-based Tier 1 automotive supplier founded in 1947 that operates factories across North America, Asia, and Latin America.
“As a Tier 1 supplier to the world’s leading automakers, our production standards leave no margin for error,” said Luis Mideros, general manager at F&P. “We evaluated numerous robotics solutions, and Autonomique stood out for delivering both the flexibility of a generalist system and the precision our lines demand. As we scale into full production, the focus is on driving measurable gains in efficiency and productivity across a growing range of tasks and facilities in our global operations.”
F&P’s collaboration with Autonomique began in late 2025 with a paid pilot in which a bi-manual wheeled robot performed critical assembly tasks, precisely picking parts from multiple bins. The mobile manipulator observed the press machine and environment at 10 hertz and put finished parts in bins.
“Every part that this robot is creating will go in a car from a large OEM within the next four hours, so this is a just-in-time manufacturing environment,” noted Tomar. “We’re showing ROI [return on investment] in 18 months, compared with the typical 24 to 36 months in this industry. F&P is eager to expand to other production lines.”
Autonomique, which has an office in Montreal, said the companies are moving toward a strategic partnership in which its AI and robots would be rolled out across multiple tasks and F.tech sites.
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Autonomique said it is onboarding additional customers, expanding its platform to new production tasks, and “laying the groundwork to become the intelligence layer for the next generation of autonomous factories worldwide.”
The startup is supported by global investors with experience in backing robotics, AI, and deep-tech companies, led by White Star Capital, with Garage Capital, iNovia Capital, and Innovobot IRV Fund.
Autonomique is building robot-agnostic general-specialized AI. Source: Autonomique
“We backed Autonomique for its rare ability to marry generalist AI-native adaptability with production-grade precision — paired with an exceptional founding team and an enormous market opportunity in automotive manufacturing and beyond,” said Catherine Ouellet-Dupuis, general partner at White Star Capital. The industrial automation market is ready for an intelligence layer, and Autonomique is building it.”
Other backers include Ryan Gariepy, Matt Rendall, and Bryan Webb, the co-founders of Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors, both of which Rockwell Automation acquired in 2023.
“Unlike what many think, deploying AI into real-world industrial applications goes far beyond simply collecting more data and creating bigger models,” said Gariepy, chief technology officer of Clearpath and OTTO and vice president of robotics at Rockwell. “Autonomique’s unique approach to combining deterministic reliability and AI-powered adaptability is the sort of approach the industry needs to unlock autonomous manufacturing at scale.”
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