The most delicate part of a robotic surgery isn't the incision. It's the moment the instrument loses contact with the tissue, when the surgeon's hands, mediated by a machine, feel nothing at all. ForceN, a Toronto-based robotics sensing startup, builds the hardware and edge AI to fill that gap. Its core product is a suite of force and torque sensors designed to give robots a digital sense of touch, and its most intriguing wedge is a paper-thin film that laminates directly into surgical tools.
Founded in 2015, the company has spent nearly a decade refining its technology, which began life in University of Toronto entrepreneurship programs [University of Toronto Entrepreneurship]. It recently closed an $8.35 million funding round, led by Brightspark Ventures, to scale production and expand its customer base across surgical, logistics, and humanoid robotics [BetaKit, April 2024]. For a hardware-heavy deeptech company, that's a significant vote of confidence in a market where sensing is often the bottleneck to safer, more precise automation.
The wedge is a film, not just a sensor
ForceN's public positioning is as a "Tier 1 manufacturer of complete Force/Torque Sensing Systems and Edge Intelligence for World-Leading Robotics OEMs" [Emerging Ventures]. That's a broad claim, but the company's technology stack suggests a focused path to get there. It sells robust, multi-axis wrist sensors for robotic arms, complete with digital interfaces and calibration software. The specs are industrial-grade: they can handle overloads up to 500% of their rated range for thousands of cycles and maintain an absolute accuracy of less than 3% across a wide temperature range [6-DOF Wrist System].
The more distinctive bet, however, is ForceFilm. This proprietary, paper-thin force-sensing film can be laminated directly into the tips of surgical instruments or other robotic end-effectors [The Robot Report]. The value proposition is intuitive: instead of inferring contact force from motor currents or joint kinematics, the sensor is right where the action happens. For a surgical robot, this could provide the surgeon with haptic feedback at the instrument tip, a layer of safety and precision that vision systems alone cannot offer.
A patient path to market
ForceN's journey reflects the long gestation typical of advanced hardware. It was incorporated as SensOR Medical Laboratories in 2015 and renamed ForceN in 2019 to facilitate sales beyond the medical market [The Spark Magazine, 2020]. The company's leadership narrative in public sources points to founder and CEO Ali Khazani, who developed the underlying technology while associated with U of T [University of Toronto Entrepreneurship]. Investor materials and a 2019 seed round announcement also reference Dr. Robert Brooks as the founder and CEO [NorthSpring Capital Partners, May 2019]. This discrepancy in the founder story is a minor curiosity in the public record, but the more relevant signal is the recent capital infusion and the clear product focus.
The recent $8.35 million round attracted a syndicate of Canadian investors focused on industrial innovation and deeptech, including BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation and Deep Tech Venture Funds, MaRS IAF, and Emerging Ventures [BetaKit, April 2024]. The capital is earmarked for scaling the technology, suggesting the company is moving from development and pilot projects toward broader OEM adoption.
2019 Seed | 0.5 | M USD
2024 Series A | 8.35 | M USD
Where the grip must prove itself
The ambition is clear, but the path is lined with established players and unproven scale. ForceN operates in a competitive field dominated by specialists like ATI Industrial Automation and FUTEK. These incumbents have decades of relationships with automotive and industrial automation customers. ForceN's answer appears to be a combination of customization, integrated edge AI for real-time data interpretation, and a focus on emerging robotic applications,like surgery and humanoids,where the performance requirements are extreme and the customer relationships are still being formed.
The other, quieter test is unit economics. Building high-precision, ruggedized mechatronic systems is capital-intensive. The company's disclosed total funding, estimated at nearly $13 million CAD, is substantial but not bottomless [BetaKit, April 2024]. The path to venture scale will require moving beyond custom, low-volume projects to a more scalable product architecture that can serve multiple OEMs without completely bespoke engineering for each.
- The customization trap. The value of a "made-to-measure" system for OEMs is high, but the cost of engineering each integration can erode margins. ForceN's edge AI and calibration software could be the lever that makes customization more of a configuration than a ground-up rebuild.
- The medical adoption curve. Surgical robotics is a field with long, rigorous regulatory pathways. While ForceFilm's potential there is compelling, near-term revenue may need to come from less-regulated logistics and industrial applications.
- The incumbent moat. ATI and others are not static. They have the manufacturing scale and application knowledge that comes from millions of sensors in the field. ForceN's wedge must be not just better, but fundamentally different in a way that matters to a new generation of robot builders.
The next twelve months
For a company that just closed a Series A, the immediate roadmap is about proving the business model can match the technology's promise. Key milestones to watch will be the announcement of design wins with named robotics OEMs, particularly in the surgical space where ForceFilm offers a clear advantage. The company is also hiring, with open roles like a Mechatronics Engineer for advanced robotic sensing signaling a build-up of technical capacity.
The back-of-the-envelope calculation for ForceN's market isn't about total addressable market dollars. It's about the value of a single, reliable sense of touch. If a sensor costing a few thousand dollars can prevent a single catastrophic error in a multi-million-dollar robotic surgery or enable a humanoid to handle a fragile object without breaking it, the unit economics tilt decisively in their favor. The company's bet is that as robots move from repetitive, blind tasks to adaptive, interactive work, this sense will move from a nice-to-have to a non-negotiable. To win, ForceN doesn't need to outsell ATI everywhere tomorrow. It needs to become the default choice for the robots being designed today, the ones that need to feel what they're doing. The incumbent it must beat isn't just another sensor company; it's the assumption that robots can work precisely without touch.
Sources
- [BetaKit, April 2024] Forcen closes $8.35 million in funding to develop its touch-tech for robots | https://betakit.com/forcen-closes-8-35-million-in-funding-to-develop-its-touch-tech-for-robots/
- [University of Toronto Entrepreneurship] University of Toronto Entrepreneurship | Forcen | https://entrepreneurs.utoronto.ca/startup/forcen/
- [Emerging Ventures] Emerging Ventures | ForceN | https://emerging.vc/portfolio/forcen/
- [6-DOF Wrist System] 6-DOF Wrist System | https://www.forcen.tech/category/6-dof-wrist-system
- [The Robot Report] ForceFilm from Forcen brings sensitivity to robots, surgical instruments | https://www.therobotreport.com/forcefilm-forcen-brings-sensitivity-robots-surgical-instruments/
- [The Spark Magazine, 2020] The Spark Magazine | https://thesparkmag.com/
- [NorthSpring Capital Partners, May 2019] Toronto-Based Forcen Raises $500,000 Seed Round Led by NorthSpring Capital Partners | http://northspringcapitalpartners.com/2019/05/23/toronto-based-forcen-raises-500000-seed-round-led-northspring-capital-partners/