Innovator journeys: Safer passage during minefield breaching operations in Ukraine
Video / May 28, 2025
Transcript
V-O: The Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security program, or IDEaS, launched a challenge to develop solutions for safer minefield breaching in Ukraine. Through this initiative, IDEaS provided funding to innovators with promising mine detection and defeat technologies—helping them advance, test, and refine their solutions for potential use by the Canadian Armed Forces and Ukraine.
Philippe Hébert: “The IDEaS program is more than just a funding program. It helps solve challenges, propelling solutions forward while advancing our defence innovation ecosystem.”
V-O: Let’s hear from our innovators on how the IDEaS program furthered their technologies.
John Clarke: “You need to find the safest way through the minefield, this project and our technology are designed to rapidly reduce that danger and allow them to operate safely.”
“So, it has immediate real-world application, and we have a real-world end user that we can work with to mature and make sure the product is ready for their use.”
Richard Cunha: “We're looking at using a number of different sensing technologies, a number of different robotic technologies, and bringing them together.”
John-Paul MacEvoy: “That's going to present challenges because we're at the cutting edge, but it also presents opportunity. “
“The value we bring is in the integration. So, each one of those has a unique capability, and also a disadvantage, so when you fuse multiple sensing modalities, you get the best of all of them”
V-O: IDEaS innovators have the opportunity to develop and showcase their technologies to military experts, aiming to uncover mission-ready solutions within Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
Kyle Davidson: “The IDEaS program has actually supported our company over a number of years now with a few projects. And critically, some of the smaller projects there helped develop the underlying technology, which is now feeding into this program.”
Richard Cunha:“With the IDEaS program and the funding that it provides, it gives us the opportunity to take some of those disparate pieces of technology, bring them together as an actual solution.”
Ian Krepps: “Our view of the IDEaS program is it is very much aligned to our collective ambition.”
“It's about innovation and achieving mission success.”
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