Innovator journeys: Robotics
Video / September 17, 2024
Transcript
(HM) The idea is, with the funding, it allows us to focus on this problem space for defence and security applications, something that we would not have had the resources to do on our own.
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We entered the Robot Round-up a little over a year ago, and we partnered with two other (Edmonton [00:00:27] companies, AroRobotics, as well as Fourien [00:00:29]. They make sensor technology. And together, the three of us developed an autonomous platform that could move in a GPS-denied environment. And once it gets to the destination, pre-selected by a human operator, it could deploy our own in-house built robotic hands to mitigate whatever object or suspicious package that it encounters.
(MJ) So, what we are developing is robot arm and hand manipulation, so that we can not just fly or drive and do surveillance, but we can actually act on problems. So, the idea there is that any task that the human can do, this robot can do, but with a human out of the way, remotely.
(PK) So, it’s a product that we call InDroCommand module, and it is a fully hardened solution. It is both a hardware and software solution. The hardware is an AI compute module. It comes with your communication sensors, but it also comes with a power management system. Now, what we’ve got is the ability to basically turn anything into a robot, so with that one centralized system, I can log into a ground vehicle that is halfway across the world, and complete some missions, or have it do them autonomously, but I can also have the same operator utilize the same command and control system on the same hardware platform to then log into a drone and complete a mission that might be on the other side of the world.
So, it’s critical for the military because it allows them to standardize on communications. It allows them to standardize on a very small piece of hardware. And so, the challenge posed to us was to create a robot that could go into an unstructured environment, create maps of the environment, but also identify objects in these unknown terrains, and come back with the situational awareness that’s necessary for public safety officials in the military to gain the intelligence they need.
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