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.
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.
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.
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.
Researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal are developing technology to detect mines and other explosive devices as part of a European Union (EU) project involving 26 partners, the university said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The researchers in Coimbra, 175 km north of capital city of Lisbon, are already testing an adapted de-mining robot provided to the university by Canadian company Clearpath Robotics, following an international competition to seek out the best 10 entries out 150 submissions.
The robot was adapted with “a robotic arm that makes it possible to sweep the ground with mine detection sensors, such as metal detectors and ground-penetration radars,” said the team’s coordinator Lino Marques.
To make the robot more autonomous, the team “added a number of different sensors such as artificial vision cameras and laser sensors to measure distance, as well as artificial intelligence software, which makes it possible to understand the information from those sensors and to make decisions about the de-mining task, without human intervention,” Marques said.
There are an estimated 110 million land mines in over 70 countries across the world, according to Coimbra University, and developing autonomous robotic de-mining equipment is expected to save thousands of lives every year.
To read the full article, click here
Clearpath became more commonly known as killer robots, when it announced its stand to the world last summer.
From a publicity perspective, the move was certainly effective at putting the small but fast-growing Waterloo Region company on the world’s radar.
More than that, it reiterated the original values that brought Clearpath’s co-founders – Matthew Rendall, Ryan Gariepy, Patrick Martinson and Bryan Webb – together in 2008 to work on a project as mechatronics engineering students at the University of Waterloo.
The project, for a U.S. Army-funded competition to reduce war casualties, was to develop robots that could clear minefields – hence the name, Clearpath – without risking lives.
Six years later, with an 80-member team that’s set to grow to 140 over the next 18 months, Clearpath has emerged as the ethical standard-bearer for an industry trying to balance world-changing technological advancements against the implications of potential misuse.
To read the full interview, click here.
Clearpath Robotics research team uses Husky UGV to run autonomous sensor data in Chile’s mines; goal to remove humans from dangerous environments.
The University of Chile’s Department of Electrical Engineering and the Advanced Mining Technology Center are using the Husky unmanned ground vehicle to solve registration problems with complex sensor data in the mines. By doing so, accurate and reliable sensing and automation will exist to enable improved safety and efficiency for tele-operated and autonomous mining activities. The teams’ overall mission is to minimize manpower in Chile’s dangerous mining environments.
“Our project develops existing technologies so that terrain surface profile and mine mapping information can be extracted from noisy sensor data,” explains Dr. Martin Adams, Professor at the University of Chile. “Our Husky-based sensing system will contribute significantly to the success and efficiency in which future mining operations take place.”
The project, Autonomous Rock Surface Modelling and Mapping in Mines, was designed to collect motion characteristics from Husky and noise characteristics from radar (Acumine 2D scanning millimeter wave radar), laser (3D Riegle scanning laser range finder) and vision-based sensors to model open pit and underground mines. A millimeter wave radar was used to penetrate dust, Speed-Up Robust Feature (SURF) detection was analyzed to determine the applicability of information extraction from mapping and surface profiling in mines. Sensors were integrated using the Robot Operating System (ROS).
To learn more, click here.
The Globe and Mail filmed Clearpath Robotics as they created one of their robots.
Click here to watch the video.
Featured on InnerSpace, the video goes into the Clearpath Robotics facility and showcases some of the amazing robots they have created.
Click here to watch.
With a vision to automate the world’s dullest, dirtiest and deadliest jobs through their unmanned robots, Clearpath Robotics Inc. is making an international name for itself. The company’s co-founders, Matt Rendall, Ryan Gariepy and Bryan Webb, were recently included in ‘40 Under 40: People to Watch in 2015’, a list published by online magazine Business Insider, that placed the young Canadian entrepreneurs alongside Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
“That recognition is helping create more credibility and buzz around Clearpath Robotics as a major player in our industry,” says CEO Matt Rendall, 30. “Big names aside, what’s really exciting is we’re the only guys on the list in robotics. That says something about the quality of the company we’ve built.”
Founded in 2009 while they were still mechatronics engineering students at The University of Waterloo, Clearpath Robotics is committed to building robots for good – on land, water or in the air. The company’s robotic solutions are used for research and development in over 30 countries in academic, mining, military, agricultural and industrial markets. High profile customers include the Canadian Space Agency, NASA, MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. Although the company has military clients such as Canada’s Department of National Defense as well as the U.S. Army and Navy – their Grizzly robotic utility vehicle (RUV) is designed for heavy industrial and military field robotics – Clearpath was the first robotics company to join the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, calling for an international treaty to ban the use of robots as lethal autonomous weapons.
To read the full article in The Globe and Mail, click here.
