Clearpath Robotics
Location: Kitchener, Ont.
How it Innovates: Most industrial robots are riveted to a factory floor, performing one basic task over and over again. The unmanned vehicles made by Clearpath Robotics are more likely to be found navigating an oilsands tailings pond. That’s because Clearpath, founded in 2009, has developed autopilot software so its robots can move around more or less autonomously.
To view Clearpath Robotics profile, and other recipients, click here.
Caitlin MacGregor was launching a new company to sell a Canadian software product in the United States when she discovered that if she hired someone who didn’t work out, it would cost the company around $300,000.
Determined to get it right the first time, she decided to use psychometric evaluations (also known as aptitude or personality tests) to vet every candidate.
It led her to look at people who didn’t have the education and experience that a software distributor would normally be looking for.nOne of those candidates who scored highly was Christine Bird.
“If we had relied on the traditional hiring process, she’d never have made the shortlist,” MacGregor, who hired Bird and began grooming her for management.
Now, Bird is MacGregor’s co-founder at Plum, a Kitchener-based startup that wants to make psychology-based assessments one of the first steps in the hiring process.
“Resume’s have no predictive ability,” MacGregor says.
Plum uses an test to measure personality, problem-solving ability and social intelligence, things that MacGregor says are better predictors of what a person will be good at.
To read the full press release, click here.
With the recent announcement of Clearpath’s Series A Funding, we thought that we’d take a look at Clearpath’s humble beginnings to see just how far our company has grown and what our robots have been up to over the years.
Check out our beautifully yellow and black infographic (because you know those are our favourite colours) below showing you just some of the things we’ve accomplished since 2009 and a glimpse into the not the distant future.
TVO is pleased to announce a new partnership with ClevrU, a Waterloo-based mobile education company, to bring existing TVOKids content to smartphone users in China. ClevrU operates a web site and provides mobile apps in China which allows smartphone users easy access to a high-quality mobile learning experience.
TVO is presented in China as the Ontario Educational Communications Authority (TVO’s legal name) under the brand Learn English. The content offered includes over 430 videos from TVOKids programs like Melvin’s Marvelous Words and Alphabet Goop that teach children how to read, write and spell in a fun and engaging way.
“What’s so exciting about TVO’s partnership with ClevrU is that it allows us to repurpose existing digital assets for an entirely new audience that we know has a tremendous thirst for quality educational content,” said Lisa de Wilde, Chief Executive Officer, TVO. “This innovative new initiative has the potential to drive an entirely new revenue stream for TVO that will support the delivery of our educational mandate in Ontario.”
To read more, click here.
Kik’s pursuit of the youth market has kept the Waterloo, Ont.-based company largely off the mainstream radar.
“I think we’re the most under-the-radar company of our size in Canada, certainly. If you were to go to the average Canadian and say, ‘Have you heard of Kik?’ probably everybody would say, ‘No,’ ” Mr. Livingston said.
“And yet, on Christmas Day, if you were to look at the top free apps on iTunes, Kik was the only Canadian company in the top 100 (at No. 7).”
Securing mainstream attention isn’t a priority for Mr. Livingston. He’s primarily focused on adding new users, many of them teenagers. The company claims it adds 250,000 users a day, but won’t say how many actually stay as active users.
Mr. Livingston said his goal is to create the “third great network” (after telephone and the Internet). That goal may seem far-fetched for a mere chat app, but if Mr. Livingston is to achieve it, he must boost Kik’s profile. “We need a much bigger reputation,” he said. “We need to be known as a hot company.”
Founded in 2009 by a group of University of Waterloo students, Kik has raised a total of $70.5 million, including $38.3 million late last year.
To read the full article, click here.
Mobile messaging app Kik has added native video capture to its service as it lays the groundwork to offer more interactive content options for its 200 million registered users.
An update to Kik for iOS and Android today now lets users record videos of up to 15 seconds from inside their chat windows. The feature includes a full-screen playback option, and videos will loop continuously.
The new addition is pretty smooth, but video capture is a standard part of any communications service these days.Kik Video SMKik — which offers a sophisticated in-chat browser for sharing web content — admits it is playing catch up here.
Now that it has established its own video platform as a base, however, the Canada-based company plans to go forth and be more creative. Or, at least, offer its users the chance to unleash new shades of creativity on its service.
To read the full article, click here.
Axonify announced that Bi-Lo Holdings has adopted its award-winning eLearning platform, in a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal. Bi-Lo needed a solution that was fresh, engaging, personalized and proven to drive knowledge, values and expectations to its more than 70,000 associates. Axonify offered an approach that was fundamentally different than the historical way in which Bi-Lo Holdings had approached knowledge delivery, particularly in the way the Axonify platform creates an accelerated and continuous learning culture on a daily basis, in a fast, fun and effective way.
To read the full press release, click here.
Inside the headquarters of Clearpath Robotics, a robot revolution is underway.
Where a receptionist would have once welcomed your arrival, there’s now a little robot named “Glados” hanging from the ceiling above a vacant table. It scans the waiting room to detect movement and offer its greeting.
On a shelf amongst an assortment of engineering awards, sits “How to Survive a Robot Uprising,” a tongue-in-cheek survival guide for newcomers.
It’s a glimpse of how co-founder and chief executive Matt Rendall envisions the future, as robots change the way people live and work.
“Before the home, our vision is a robot in every company and every job site,” he said. “There are still so many jobs that humans are not well suited to do.”
A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group shows that investment in industrial robots will grow 10 per cent per year in the world’s 25-biggest export nations through 2025 — overshadowing the current growth of two to three per cent.
Companies will be motivated by how cost-effective and efficient robots are compared to the human workforce, the study said. It’s estimated that labour expenses can be reduced by 24 per cent in Canada, and cut even further in regions like South Korea and Japan.
Rendall believes that’s where Clearpath comes in, as the Kitchener, Ont.-based company rolls out a fleet of robots to automate what it calls the “dullest, dirtiest and deadliest” jobs in the world, spanning industries like manufacturing, agriculture and the military.
To read the full article on CTV News, click here.
Miovision is, in many ways, answering a call from cities worldwide that are seeking ways of unclogging congested roadways without building more of them. Technology like Miovision is developing could help make travel less painful while addressing broader societal problems like pollution and driver fatalities. But while the size of the market is vast, so is the competition from entrenched players and other startups looking to bring novel technologies to market.
That’s one reason Miovision plans to use this cash infusion to expand its technology beyond car counting and turn it into a traffic management system for so-called “smart cities.” Until now, Miovision has helped cities collect data on what’s happening at a given intersection, by installing its video systems at that intersection and analyzing the data afterward.
But simply providing the data, McBride realized, could make Miovision just another commodity product. After all, there are other video detection systems out there, as well as lower tech options, like magnetic loops embedded in the road that record passing traffic. Now, McBride wants to help cities find practical ways to use that data as well.
The company is slowly rolling out new hardware that will connect switchboards at each intersection to the cloud so street lights can communicate with each other and respond to traffic data from the video feed in real time. In other words, where once traffic data was updated every year or so by a college kid at the side of the road, now, it’ll be updated every instant.
To read the full article, click here.
Kitchener, ON, Canada – February 16, 2015 – Robotics Business Review (RBR) has unveiled its fourth annual RBR50 list, naming Clearpath Robotics as one of the most noteworthy companies in the global robotics industry for 2015.
RBR50 companies are recognized based on their innovation, groundbreaking application(s), commercial success and potential, and represent many different levels and facets of the robotics ecosystem.
“We’re thrilled to have made the RBR50 list; the entire Clearpath team is very proud of the company we’ve built,” said Ryan Gariepy, Chief Technology Officer at Clearpath Robotics. “We’re incredibly grateful to see that our efforts to accelerate robotics development continue to be acknowledged and that a growing number of organizations are now making robotics a critical part of their long term strategy.”
Read the full announcement here.
