News

As humans adapt to a future of interacting and working with robots, researcher Brandon DeHart asks the question: “What happens if a 200-kilogram industrial robot falls on a worker in a warehouse?”

While artificial intelligence is making its way into everything from health care to financial services, DeHart cautions there is still a long road ahead before physical robots are seamlessly integrated into our society.

“A robot has to be 1000 times better than humans before we will trust it,” says DeHart, the University of Waterloo’s RoboHub manager and PhD student in the Faculty of Engineering. 

A new institute at the University of Waterloo will focus on fostering campus-wide research into artificial intelligence (AI) and provide a portal for organizations to access its extensive expertise in the rapidly growing field.

Launched today, the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute will bring together almost 100 faculty members to tackle practical and fundamental problems brought to them by partners in business, government and the non-profit sector.

A leading international researcher is joining Waterloo Engineering as part of a federal initiative to attract top-tier scientists and scholars to do groundbreaking work in Canada.

Kerstin Dautenhahn, one of the founders of the field of social robotics, was announced today as a Canada 150 Research Chair with funding for the next seven years.

Dautenhahn is coming to Waterloo from the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, where she is a recognized expert in how robots interact with each other and with people, a key field as robots are increasingly deployed outside traditional manufacturing plants.​

The University of Waterloo will be a key partner with leading Canadian companies and sectors chosen to help grow our country’s global competitiveness through significant investments in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced manufacturing.

As part of the Government of Canada’s $950 million Innovation Supercluster Initiative, Waterloo will take a leading research role in two of the five winning bids announced today. The effort will see researchers and innovators from Waterloo become key contributors in industry-led consortia.

The RoboHub has been announced as the first beta site to receive a Kinova Robotics MOVO mobile manipulator. Our collaboration with Kinova will focus on fundamental research in human-robot interaction (HRI) and collaborative, heterogeneous robot teams.

Assorted hands and arms are starting to overtake Soo Jeon’s office – but he doesn’t mind in the least.

A professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo and RoboHub research affiliate, he is focused on finding a solution to a key issue in the burgeoning field of robotics.

The first few weeks after a stroke – when the brain is best able to rewire and reorganize itself to give victims a chance at recovery – are vital.

Unfortunately, while about 62,000 Canadians suffer strokes each year, of survivors with moderate to severe impairment, only 37 per cent receive rehabilitation in the weeks immediately afterwards.

Before oil prices fell from more than US$100 per barrel three years ago, jobs driving heavy-haul mining trucks in the oilsands were sought after for their six-figure salaries.

A four-part look at how robots are changing the way we work. First up, robots aren’t killing jobs, they’re creating new ones and more of them — at least at a GE Aviation plant in Quebec.

Centre for Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence (CPAMI) faculty member Professor William Melek will lead the RoboHub research initiative, which is funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the provincial government for a total budget of $4,600,000. CPAMI faculty members, among others in the Faculty of Engineering, will benefit greatly from this innovative facility. 

With more and more robots headed for the commercial world, a Waterloo Engineering researcher hopes to speed their arrival by developing cheaper, general-purpose control systems.

At the moment, the high cost of customized robotics applications in workplaces such as warehouses and manufacturing plants largely limits them to huge companies with plenty of money to invest.