The federal government is investing nearly $800,000 in Toronto-based
Engineering Services Inc. to help it develop "a next-generation mobile robotics platform." The robotics and automation company develops technologies that can be applied in a variety of sectors, ranging from the medical to the military.
The robotics platform's main task is to develop ways to use automation to perform certain tasks in high risk environments, such as ones where the military or law enforcement are operating. The more robots can be used in such environments to perform key functions such as exploration and information-gathering, the safer those environments, and the people who work in them, may become. The repayable investment comes via the governments Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative (SADI), which supports research projects in defence, security, and aerospace.
"Canada is a world leader in robotics, and through targeted and repayable investments such as this one, we are helping cement that reputation," said industry minister Christian Paradis, upon announcing the investment. "Advanced economies have to become leaders in the high-value-added stages of production." The research and development will be done with help from University of Toronto faculty and students.
ESI was founded in 1982 by Dr. Andrew Goldenberg who joined the University of Toronto as a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering that same year. A researcher with a long history of work in robotics, Goldenberg spent the years just prior to that working on the development of the first Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), which most of us know more colloquially as the
Canadarm--the jointed, robotic, arm-like mechanism that was used for decades to move shuttle payloads during missions in space.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Office of Christian Paradis