Saturday, June 5, 2010

Quanser Joined Ontario Premier on a Mission to Israel

Back in February, Quanser hosted Ontario Premier who announced a trade mission to Israel and the West Bank. Few days ago, Paul Gilbert, Quanser's CEO returned from the 2010 Ontario Life Sciences Mission. Together with the representatives of other 30+ companies and institutions he was promoting healthcare industry research, innovations and new technologies originating in Ontario.

As a part of the official program, senior Ontario and Israeli government officials discussed opportunities for building stronger business ties in life sciences between Canada and Israel. Israeli companies from the sector were invited for a series of one-on-one sessions to discuss specific opportunities with their Ontario counterparts.

Six years of research and hard work in the field of robotics and real-time control brought Quanser endorsement not only from the Ontario government. Quanser is being recognized around the world as a leader in the field and we see more and more interest in our technology. With its history of R&D in robotics for surgical simulation, teleoperation and rehabilitation, quite a few Israeli companies were interested in utilizing Quanser's haptic technology in their products - whether for medical simulation devices or in rehabilitation robotics field.

The mission also strengthened our relationship with other Ontario institutions that took part in it, such as University of Western Ontario, York University, Queen's University, University of Toronto, or Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR).

Being in Israel, Paul took an opportunity to meet in person with some of Quanser clients. Accompanied by Ittai from Techenware, Quanser's distributor in Israel, they visited Technion University, Ben Gurion University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem to discuss Quanser technology. Most of the professors were interested in our teaching platforms for undergraduate engineering education. From the research point of view, the interest gravitated towards the unmanned vehicles and autonomous robotics and their application in agriculture - from melon picking, to a specific point irrigation. Israeli researchers were also interested in our ability to implement haptics with unmanned robotics. Using the vision and a sense of touch on autonomous vehicles would allow them to do some interesting things in the area of agriculture.

Hebrew University also expressed its interest in integrating our haptic technology in their research into a specific surgical operations - an advanced field with highly complex mathematical models involved.

As a result of these discussions at the universities, a senior researcher from Israel is coming to visit Quanser to discuss significant research projects - collaborations among top Israeli universities - which could happen in the next few years.

Obviously, Paul came back from the trip with a basket full of potential opportunities which we will be developing in the course of the next few years.

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