Canadian Robotics Muscles into Prime Time

Studded clear across the nation’s 2700 miles from British Columbia to the Maritimes are dozens of newbies, startups, and semi-established developers that have made their appearances on the robotics scene mostly since 2007 or so. Basically, a skinny decade that has rocketed Canada into a trajectory that’s exciting and fun to watch as it soars.

Waterloo, where?
I first took note of and began writing about Canadian robotics in 2012 when researching an article on the then-little-known Clearpath Robotics from Waterloo, Ontario, and its Husky unmanned ground vehicle.

What I noticed was a bubbling up of Canadian robotics tech that I felt bore closer scrutiny.  I sent freelance writers north to look for themselves and maybe to confirm or to temper what I was seeing. They returned with articles more enthusiastic than mine. Okay, I wasn’t going balmy! These Canadians were kicking high-tech butt from coast to coast, and it was very cool to see this mostly nascent ecosystem on the grow. I had a front-row seat!

Last Friday, I returned from six days of a robot road show consisting of robots of all types, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing that took me from Quebec City to Montreal, and which massively reconfirmed what I think is happening in Canadian robotics: It’s reached critical mass, which has created wide-scale recognition of its tech, which has, in turn, spawned a massive inflow of private, and now government, investment millions. I think I said the word awesome six or seven hundred times during the course of the trip.

What we’re seeing ushering up is the beginning of what I’d like to call the Golden Age of Canadian Robotics. Seriously! I think Canada is on a roll that will only grow bigger, wider, more robust, and that Golden is only a burnish or two away.

Promote, promote, promote
I shared that Golden Age appellation with Canadians on my robot road trip, asking dozens if they agreed with me or not. Surprisingly, I got a fifty-fifty response from the mostly quiet and humble developers and researchers to whom I posed the question. Such humility, of course, needs some upgrading: they’ll need to be as adept in self-promotion as they are with their tech…or better get someone to do it for them. Promotion after all is crucial in order to get and maintain market attention, which can be fleeting under the churn of global competition. 

The classic example is the post-WWII computer industry in the UK, with all of its great genius for computing at Bletchley Park, failed at promoting itself, which bred neglect and lack of funding, which Thomas Hendry amply chronicles in, Innovating for Failure: Government Policy and the Early British Computer Industry.  

It’s a fate unlikely to befall Canadian robotics what with the great jump on recognition and cash it has received over the last two years. But, as the saying goes, got to keep the pedal to the metal.

Case in point: A TV crew from the CBC accompanied the Montreal leg of our robot tour. Vincent Maisonneuve, the CBC journalist, was intrigued when he overheard me mouthing off on the Golden Age theme. He asked to interview me on some of the specifics. I got a chance to lay out the case in some detail. However, I’m now back in Boston and the story needs someone in Canada to push it along.

Late that same afternoon, with the CBC crew gone for the day, I met the perfect Canadian pitchman: Pierre Dumouchel, whose encyclopedic grasp of Canadian tech is remarkable and who would have made for a super CBC interview.

Dumouchel, Director General of one of Canada’s leading universities of engineering, the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), is a believer in the Golden Age of Canadian Robotics. As examples, he rattled off a string of manufacturers, laboratories and universities with spinoff companies, government and VC investments, as well as his roadmap on how and when to nurture the Golden Age along.

The next CBC interview on the topic could easily benefit from a chat with Dumouchel; he’s got the nation’s entire high-tech, market-worthy skills and potential in his mental Rolodex, and he’s more than happy to expound on it at length. In fact, if the movement needs a point man to pull together all the disparate elements of Canadian tech, Dumouchel might be a good choice to be its czar.