News

Professor Oliver Schneider, an Engineering faculty member in Management Sciences and a RoboHub collaborator, has recently been awarded $250,000 under the New Frontiers in Research Fund 2020 Exploration program, which brings researchers from different disciplines together to pursue high-risk, high-reward research projects.

Professor Hamad Shahsavan, a RoboHub collaborator in the field of soft robots who recently joined Waterloo as a faculty member, is the lead author of a paper chosen as a finalist for a 2020 Cozzarelli Prize recognizing the top work published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Engineering IDEAs Clinic™ has partnered with Inductive Automation, Brock Solutions and Opto 22 to create a small-scale automation project for students to gain hands-on knowledge of real-world equipment and tools.

An exoskeleton research team led by Brokoslaw Laschowski has been featured in a Waterloo Engineering article for their work on developing intelligent controllers for robotic exoskeletons using wearable cameras and AI (see the RoboHub project description for details).

A self-driving shuttle bus - the first at any academic institution in Canada - could be operating on the Ring Road at the University of Waterloo by the time students return to campus for in-person classes as COVID-19 restrictions ease.

A research team led by Amir Khajepour, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, has spent four years and well over $1 million on the autonomous bus project, dubbed WATonoBus, and is now doing final testing to ensure it can handle winter weather.

The team at Waterloo EDC recently interviewed Matt Rendall, the CEO and Co-Founder of both Clearpath Robotics and Otto Motors, and our very own RoboHub Manager, Brandon DeHart, about what it's like to study, develop, sell, and use robots here in the Waterloo Region!

RoboHub Director William Melek and RoboHub collaborator Patricia Nieva's app for TraceSCAN has been in the works since the beginning of the pandemic. Recently, the COVID-19 tracking app has gotten provincially funded to accelerate the development of wearable contact tracing technology.

Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn, the Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics, and her team at the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL) are investigating how social robots can be used to help ensure all children enjoy playing games and sports, regardless of their abilities.

While many people hope to get back to normal after the pandemic, economics professor Joel Blit (MASc ’99) sees an unprecedented opportunity for Canada to transform its economy.

The pandemic has forced businesses to do things differently and often better. Firms have digitized processes and automated workflows to survive the economic crisis and address its health risks.

As part of an article exploring the impacts of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program on innovation and technology adoption, RoboHub collaborator Professor Joel Blit mentioned the RoboHub as a potential resource to help Canadian businesses to access and implement cutting-edge technologies.