Alumni

MME alum's company receives $8.5 million in funding

Rebecca Schuetze — Fri, 10 May 2024 20:01:44 +0000

MME alum's company receives $8.5 million in funding Rebecca Schuetze Fri, 05/10/2024 - 16:01

Forcen, a robotics sensing company, has received Pre-A $8.5 million funding round as it scales operations for its prototype production facility to support more customers and to continue developing its research and development for its force sensing technology for robots.

The company was founded in 2015 by Robert Brooks (BASc ‘12 mechanical and mechatronics engineering). Its core offering, ForceFilm, is a thin, force-sensing film that can be laminated onto a machine to give it a sense of touch, and previously won the Canadian national James Dyson Award.

To date, Forcen has raised $12.95 million in equity funding. Learn more about Forcen’s newest round of funding in BetaKit.

Global Engagement Seminar Speaker Series

Brandon J. DeHart — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 20:15:19 +0000

Global Engagement Seminar Speaker Series Brandon J. DeHart Fri, 02/23/2024 - 15:15

The Global Engagement Seminar: Me and My Robot is opening its special lectures to the public for the first time! Join our 2024 Jarislowsky Fellows, leading experts and practitioners in the field, as we explore the social, physical, and practical interfaces between humans and robots and what their presence in our everyday environments will mean for ourselves as individuals and for society more broadly.

Everyone is welcome - no registration required!

All lectures are taking place in Engineering 5, Room 3102 and include a talk and Q&A.

Robots for People Who Know Nothing About Robots

Wednesday, January 31, 7:00-8:30PM

Evan Ackerman is the digital senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, the award-winning flagship publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Unfamiliar Intelligence: Art, Exoticism, Robots, and AI

Wednesday, February 7, 8:00-9:30PM

Ken Goldberg is an artist, inventor, and professor in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department at the University of California, Berkeley with secondary appointments in EECS, Art Practice, the School of Information, and Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School.

What Thriving Interactive Robotics Could Mean for Our Society

Wednesday, February 14, 7:00-8:30PM

AJung Moon is an experimental roboticist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at McGill University. She investigates how robots and AI systems influence the way people move, behave, and make decisions in order to inform how we can design and deploy such autonomous intelligent systems more responsibly.

Reading Robots

Wednesday, February 28, 7:00-8:30PM

Amelia DeFalco is a professor of contemporary literature and member of the Medical Humanities Research Group at the University of Leeds. Her work concerns posthuman approaches to care, vulnerability, materiality and touch in contemporary cultural narratives.

Every Moment of Every Day: When Robots Become Environmental

Wednesday, March 6, 7:00-8:30PM

Heather Suzanne Woods is a scholar and researcher of digital rhetoric and the author of Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right with Leslie Hahner. She is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Communication Studies at Kansas State University.

Robots, Regulation, and the Changing Nature of Public Space

Wednesday, March 20, 7:00-8:30PM

Kristen Thomasen is a leading expert in robotics law and policy and an assistant professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC. Her research is focused on the ways automation and robotic technologies in public spaces affect equity, accessibility, and privacy, and how automation and surveillance can introduce privatization into the public sphere.

LoopX AI: Canada’s first autonomous, all-weather pizza delivery robot

Sanya Jain — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 18:10:39 +0000

LoopX AI: Canada’s first autonomous, all-weather pizza delivery robot Sanya Jain Fri, 08/12/2022 - 14:10

University of Waterloo students may soon be able to order pizza or a burger from a nearby plaza and have it brought to campus by Canada’s first all-weather autonomous delivery robot.

LoopX, a Waterloo Engineering startup company that is developing the technology to do just that, received a $30,000 funding boost recently when it took top prize in the 5G Transportation Challenge sponsored by Rogers and the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network.

As the challenge winner, LoopX is also benefiting from technical support from Rogers and its partners to develop a 5G Multi-access Edge Computing system (MEC) that gives software developers cloud-computing capabilities which are close to the end users.

“While most of the companies competing have been in business for over 10 years, LoopX just launched last year,” says founder Chao Yu, a mechatronics engineering doctoral candidate. “There are a lot of factors that helped us be successful including all the autonomous vehicle expertise at the University. Most of the LoopX team members are involved in the University of Waterloo’s WATonoBus, the first all-weather 5G autonomous shuttle bus at a Canadian university.”

View on YouTube

Within the next three months, LoopX - also a recipient of funding from the Engineer of the Future Fund at Waterloo Engineering - plans to demonstrate its 5G MEC-based hybrid driving system in the David Johnson Research + Technology Park at the University of Waterloo. Yu, a member of the Mechatronic Vehicle Systems Lab led by Amir Khajepour (RoboHub researcher), his PhD supervisor, expects the startup’s autonomous delivery robot to receive the necessary approvals to be commercialized sometime next year. The service is expected to be piloted in August with customers ordering food from a partner restaurant close to campus for delivery to the front of the Davis Centre. Within 30 minutes, the robot would arrive with the food in one of its multiple compartments. The customer would unlock the compartment using a code messaged to them.

Although there are other autonomous delivery robots, Yu says his company is unique because its advanced chassis control techniques, cutting-edge autonomous driving algorithms and datasets gathered in harsh Canadian winters provide a reliable all-weather delivery service. Its bright red, 1.2 m X .8 m X 1.2 m delivery vehicle is equipped with multiple safety features, such as an audible signal for pedestrian safety, and remote and on-board e-stops. Its autonomous driving features include two LiDARs, eight ultrasonic sensors, and eight monocular cameras, as well as a GNSS module that delivers 360-degree perception and centimetre-level positioning.

Read the full article on the University of Waterloo News page.

RoboHub helps Avidbots to advance robotics innovation

Sanya Jain — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 17:36:51 +0000

RoboHub helps Avidbots to advance robotics innovation Sanya Jain Fri, 08/12/2022 - 13:36

When Pablo Molina (BASc ’11), chairman, CTO, VP of Product and co-founder of Avidbots, wanted to improve his company's flagship autonomous floor-scrubbing robot, he turned to his former University of Waterloo professor and mentor, William Melek, for help.“When I attended Waterloo, I co-founded a robotics team and Professor Melek was instrumental in helping us all the way through,” Molina says. “We now have a global company and have to solve really hard problems. I reached out and asked if we could collaborate on research because Waterloo talent is truly among the brightest in the country.”

The University of Waterloo has the largest and most active robotics and automation research group in Canada, and RoboHub brings together all the related technical, educational, research, and service support into one central group. The robotics expertise within RoboHub allows researchers and collaborators to dive deeper into some of the problems industry is grappling with and find research solutions that a company would not otherwise have access to on their own.

“Avidbots had the opportunity to get access to some of our brightest minds working in advanced robotics, artificial intelligence. The intellectual property generated from the research partnership will make them competitive in the marketplace and will put the products at the leading edge of the technology in their industry sector. This is something that is very unique to Waterloo and unlikely found anywhere else,” says Melek, RoboHub Director.

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Melek explains that the robotics expertise within RoboHub allows them to dive deeper into some of the problems industry is grappling with and find research solutions that a company would not otherwise have access to on their own.

Waterloo RoboHub is powering Canadian robotics innovation through research opportunities and collaborations. Academic and industry partnerships like Avidbots can infuse research solutions into sectors critical for innovation and economic growth in Canada.

“Waterloo is an epicentre for robotics, not just in Canada, but globally because we have the talent and the institutions like the University of Waterloo,” Molina says. He is excited about the improvements to Neo and its commercial potential in the long term. “The collaboration has been helpful in expanding the research capability of Avidbots,” Molina says. “Working with the University of Waterloo will have a positive impact on our growth because we’ve been able to solve very hard problems that would have otherwise taken a very long time with a significant financial cost.”

Read the full article on the University of Waterloo News page.

Alumni

MME alum's company receives $8.5 million in funding

Global Engagement Seminar Speaker Series

2024 Global Engagement Seminar Speaker Series

Robots for People Who Know Nothing About Robots

Unfamiliar Intelligence: Art, Exoticism, Robots, and AI

What Thriving Interactive Robotics Could Mean for Our Society

Reading Robots

Every Moment of Every Day: When Robots Become Environmental

Robots, Regulation, and the Changing Nature of Public Space

LoopX AI: Canada’s first autonomous, all-weather pizza delivery robot

RoboHub helps Avidbots to advance robotics innovation