Ryan Gariepy (BASc '09, mechatronics engineering, MASc '12, mechanical engineering*) and his co-founders, who are also all mechatronics alumni, established Clearpath Robotics in 2009 at a time when the robotics industry in Canada was still finding its footing, and it wasn't common to see Canadian startups taking technology that involved physical robots from the lab to the global market. Now that's changed.
Their idea was simple: give researchers better tools to experiment with real robots operating in real environments.
What helped Clearpath scale was being rooted in the Waterloo ecosystem, where the company could test its products with students, faculty, and founders for early feedback and maintain close relationships with Waterloo's students and researchers to ensure its technology reflected real-world needs.
Clearpath has grown alongside Waterloo's expanding robotics and entrepreneurial ecosystem and continues to support spaces connected to the university such as RoboHub and Velocity that allow students, faculty, and researchers to gather and collaborate across disciplines.
At the time that Clearpath was founded, there were only a handful of robotics companies in Waterloo Region. Now many more robotics startups have been founded; Gariepy says it's "incredibly exciting."
Find out why Gariepy believes that the future of robotics is being built in Waterloo:
Plus, more of the story about the story of how Clearpath scaled to become a leader in robotics: Made by Waterloo: Why the future of robotics is being built in Waterloo.
*For prospective graduate students, please note MASc in Mechanical Engineering is an older program name and new degrees are now called MASc in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.