Awesome Canadian Robotics

A curated list of Canadian robotics open-source software, companies and researchers.

The maintenance of this list is aligned with the proposition of the Canadian Robotics Council to better share information about robotics initiative in Canada. This is not a comprehensive list of everything happening in Canada related to robotics. We added abitrary criterias to be listed here with the intention to be transparent.

Contents

• Open-Source Software
• Datasets
• Companies
  • Startups
  • Robot manufacturers
  • Aerospace
  • Natural Resources
  • Warehouse Robotics
• Organisations and Divisions
• Laboratories
  • Alberta
  • British Columbia
  • Ontario
  • Quebec
  • New Brunswick
  • Nova Scotia
  • Newfoundland
• Related Awesome Lists

Open-Source Software

You need at least 15 stars on your repository to be listed here. The list is sorted by number of stars.

• libpointmatcher:

  • An Iterative Closest Point (ICP) library for 2D and 3D mapping in Robotics. Norlab is maintaining and using the library for their research on autonomous navigation in harsh environments.

• lidar_snow_removal:

  • This repo is a set of nodes for ROS to filter point clouds with the goal of removing snow in Lidar data. TrailLAb was maintaining this package for their publications on the Canadian Adverse Weather Dataset.

• VT&R3:

  • VT&R3 is a C++ implementation of the Teach and Repeat navigation framework. It enables a robot to be taught a network of traversable paths and then closely repeat any part of the network. utiasASRL is maintaining and using the package for their research on vision-based localization algorithms in outdoor environments.

• optimized_dp:

  • Optimizing Dynamic Programming-Based Algorithms Resources. SFU-MARS is maintaining this library for their research on principled robot decision making ombining traditional analytical methods in robotics and modern data-driven techniques.

• mrasl_mav_traj:

  • Trajectory utilities for Micro UAVs (MAVs). Maintained by MRASL.

• norlab_icp_mapper:

  • A 2-D/3-D mapping library relying on the "Iterative Closest Point" algorithm. Norlab is maintaining and using the framework to deploy mobile robots in extreme conditions, recently featured in Kilometer-scale autonomous navigation in subarctic forests: challenges and lessons learned and Lidar Scan Registration Robust to Extreme Motions.

• pyro:

  • An object-based toolbox for robot dynamic simulation, analysis, control and planning. Developed by USherbrooke's Createk for their research on dynamic systems' design, control, simulation and planning.

• Weather Invariant Lidar-based Navigation (WILN):

  • A lidar-based Teach-and-Repeat framework designed to enable outdoor autonomous navigation in harsh weather. Norlab is maintaining and using the framework to deploy mobile robots in harsh weather, recently featured in Kilometer-scale autonomous navigation in subarctic forests: challenges and lessons learned.

Datasets

• The Boreas Dataset: The Boreas dataset was collected by driving a repeated route over the course of 1 year resulting in stark seasonal variations. In total, Boreas contains over 350km of driving data including several sequences with adverse weather conditions such as rain and heavy snow.
  • pyboreas: Devkit for the Boreas autonomous driving dataset
• The Canadian Adverse Driving Conditions Dataset: The CADC dataset, collected during winter within the Region of Waterloo, Canada, aims to promote research to improve self-driving in adverse weather contditions.
• The Montmorency dataset: The dataset contains the ground truth species, diameter at breast height (DBH) and position of more than 1000 trees across four forests, as well as 11 trajectories of a lidar-equipped robot going through these forests.
• The Montmorency Forest Wintertime Dataset: The dataset was collected in the Montmorency subarctic forest and presents fluctuating weather, including light and heavy snow, rain, and drizzle. It contains 18.8km of autonomous navigation in a teach-and-repeat mode.
• Precise Synthetic Image and LiDAR Dataset for Autonomous Vehicle Perception (presil): The dataset contains over 50,000 instances and includes high-definition images with full resolution depth information, semantic segmentation (images), point-wise segmentation (point clouds), ground point labels (point clouds), and detailed annotations for vehicles and people in Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), a commercial video game.
  • DeepGTAV-PreSIL: Data generation code used to mine data from GTAV
  • PreSIL-tools: Scripts for generating ground planes, splits, and visualizations from the data
• Forest image datasets:
  • This repository contains two datasets: a 43,000 synthetic forest images and a 100 real image dataset. Both include high-definition RGB images with depth information, bounding box, instance segmentation masks and keypoints annotation.
• University of Toronto Indoor 3D Dataset:
  • This repository contains a robot navigation dataset in crowded indoor environment. It includes the lidar frames, their localization computed by ICP based algorithm PointMap, and the labels provided by automated annotation approach. It was introduced in Learning Spatiotemporal Occupancy Grid Maps for Lifelong Navigation in Dynamic Scenes.

Companies

Startups

• Foxtrot Industriel Official page

Robot manufacturers

Companies with their primary mission focusing on robotics. You need at least 10 employees to be listed here. The list is sorted by alphabetical order.

• Avidbots: Official page
• Bluewrist: Official page
• Canadensys (mobile): Official page
• Cellula Robotics: Official page
• Clearpath: Official page, GitHub
• Kinova (manipulator): Official page, GitHub
• IndroRobotics (mobile): Official page
• Marginally Clever Robots, Ltd.: Official page
• Rheinmetall: Official page
• Robotiq (manipulator): Official page

Aerospace

• MDA Ltd.: Official page
• NGC Aerospace Ltd.: Official page

Natural Resources

• MacLean Engineering: Official page
• Rigid Robotics: Official page

Warehouse Robotics

• OTTO Motors: Official page
• Sir Steward Official page
• Think Logistics: Official page

Organisations and Divisions

Teams or divisions working on robotics within a larger organization.

• Hydro-Québec - Robotics team at IREQ
• General Dynamics Land System Canada - Innovation Cell
• LeddarTech
• FPInnovations
• IVI: Official page

Laboratories

To be on this list, the director has to have at least 1000 citations on Google Scholar. The list is sorted by alphabetical order.

Alberta

• Applied Nonlinear Controls Laboratory, University of Alberta:
  • Nonlinear Control, Analysis, Prediction and Influence of Systems, Nonlinear Mathematical Models, Robotics, UAVs.
  • Director: Alan Lynch
• Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Construction (AIRCon-Lab), University of Alberta:
  • Sensors, Actuators and Artificial Intelligence in Construction Sites.
  • Director: Shih-Chung Jessy Kang
• Assistive Technology Labs, University of Alberta:
  • International Assistive Technology Development, Clinical Research, Children's Development.
  • Director: Kim Adams
• Bionic Limbs for Improved Natural Control, University of Alberta:
  • Sensory Motor Control, Integration of Advanced Prosthetics and Robotics Systems, Prosthetic Restoration, Rehabilitation Robotics.
  • Director: Jacqueline Hebert & Patrick Pilarski
• Computer Vision and Robotics Group, University of Alberta:
  • Computer Vision, Robotics, Medical Imaging.
  • Director: Martin Jagersand
• Intelligent Automation Research Laboratory (iAR), University of Calgary:
  • Industrial automation with mechatronic systems, vibration, control, optimization, and artificial intelligence.
  • Director: Jihyun Lee
• Intelligent Robot Learning Laboratory, University of Alberta:
  • Fundamental reinforcement learning research, Application of artificial intelligence to real-world settings
  • Director: Matthew E. Taylor
• Neuromuscular Control & Biomechanics Laboratory, University of Alberta:
  • Human Mobility and Performance, Advanced Assistive Technology, Rehabilitation.
  • Director: Hossein Rouhani & Albert H. Vette
• Robotarium Laboratory, University of Calgary:
  • Control, Artificial Intelligence, Navigation, Localization, Mapping, Robot Cooperation & Collaboration, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
  • Director: Alex Ramirez-Serrano
• Robotic Systems Research, Telerobotic and Biorobotic Systems Group, University of Alberta:
  • Medical & Biomedical Robotics, Surgery, Rehabilitation, Image-guided Robotics, Human-Robot Interfaces, Machine Intelligence-based Solutions.
  • Director: Mahdi Tavakoli

British Columbia

• Autonomous Intelligence and Robotics Lab (AIRob), Simon Fraser University:
  • Automated planning, Multi-Agent/Robot Systems, Spatio-Temporal and Constraint Reasoning
  • Director: Hang Ma
• Collaborative Advances Robotics and Intelligent Systems lab (CARIS), University of British Columbia:
  • Ethics and Human-Robot Interaction
  • Director: Machiel Van der Loos
• Multi-Agent Robotic Systems Lab (MARS), Simon Fraser University:
  • Robotic safety, Reinforcement learning, Human intent inference, Visual navigation
  • Director: Mo Chen
• UBC Computer Vision Lab, University of British Columbia:
  • Image understanding, video understanding, human pose estimation, and understanding of sports videos using machine learning and deep learning techniques.
  • Director: James J. Little
• UBC Robotics and Control Laboratory, University of British Columbia:
  • Medical image analysis, Image guided diagnosis and interventions, Telerobotic, Robotic control of mobile machines and manipulators
  • Directors: Purang Abolmaesumi, Tim Salcudean, Robert Rohling

Ontario

• Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ARIS), University of Guelph:
  • Intelligent Systems, Robotics, Control Systems, Vision and Signal Processing, Sensors, Communications
  • Director: Simon X. Yang
• Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Lab (ASB Lab), University of Toronto:
  • Assistive and Social Robotics, Search and Rescue, Intelligent Robotics, 3D Sensing, Human-Robot Interaction
  • Director: Goldie Nejat
• Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL), University of Waterloo:
  • Robot Motion Planning, Future Transportation Systems, Autonomous Driving
  • Director: Stephen L. Smith
• Autonomous Space Robotics Lab (ASRL), University of Toronto:
  • Mobile robots, Vision-based navigation, GitHub
  • Director: Timothy D Barfoot
• Autonomous Vehicle Research and Intelligence Lab (AVRIL), University of Waterloo:
  • Passenger Vehicles, Automated driving, Connected (V2X) Vehicles, ADAS, Driverless shuttles, Commercial trucks, Warehouse and industrial robots, Field platform vehicles
  • Directors: Amir Khajepour, John McPhee
• Co​ntinuum Roboti​​cs Laboratory, University of Toronto:
  • Continuum robotics, GitHub
  • Director: Jessica Burgner-Kahrs
• Lakehead University Robotics Lab, Lakehead University:
  • Biped Walking Robots, parallel robots, Nonlinear Adaptive Control and Robust Control
  • Director: Xiaoping Liu
• Offroad Robotics, Queen's University:
  • Field and mobile robotics, state estimation, mechatronics, and systems control, GitHub
  • Director: Josh Marshall
• People, AI, & Robots lab (PAIR), University of Toronto:
  • Robotic Manipulation, Robot Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Machine Learning, Computer Vision
  • Director: Animesh Garg
• Robotics & Automatic Control Laboratory, Lakehead University:
  • Design of estimation and control algorithms for UAVs. Vision-aided inertial navigation systems for multi-UAV collaborative applications in GPS-denied environments
  • Director: Abdelhamid Tayebi
• Space and Terrestrial Autonomous Robotic Systems (STARS Laboratory), University of Toronto:
  • Collaborative Robotics, Mobile Manipulation, Multimodal Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, GitHub
  • Director: Jonathan Kelly
• Toronto Intelligent Systems Lab (TISL), University of Toronto:
  • Probabilistic and Geometric Deep Learning, 3D Vision, Reinforcement Learning
  • Director: Igor Gilitschenski
• Toronto Robotics and AI Laboratory (TRAILab), University of Toronto:
  • 3D Object Detection, Drone Landing, Robotic Manipulation, Robotics perception, Planning problems, GitHub
  • Previously the WAVE Lab in University of Waterloo (GitHub)
  • Director: Steven Waslander
• Waterloo Intelligent Systems Engineering Lab (WISE Lab), University of Waterloo
  • Autonomous Driving, Human Driving Behaviour Modeling, Safety And Quality Requirements, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning, Simulation, GitLab
  • Director: Krzysztof Czarnecki

Quebec

• Aerospace Mechatronics Laboratory (AML), McGill:
  • UAVs, Space robotics systems, Timber grasping
  • Director: Inna Sharf
• Control and Robotics Laboratory (CoRo), École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS):
  • Precision robotics, parallel robotics, mechatronics and haptics, control
  • Director: Ilian Bonev
• Intelligent / Interactive / Integrated / Interdisciplinary Robot Lab (IntRoLab), Université de Sherbrooke:
  • Service Robots, All-Terrain Robots, Interactive Robots, Assistive Robotics, Tele-Health Robotics, Automobile, Surgical Robots
  • Director: Francois Michaud
• Laboratoire de robotique, Université Laval:
  • Parallel mechanisms, Articulated robotic hands, Cable-driven parallel mechanisms, Physical human-robot interaction, Haptic devices, Assistive devices
  • Director: Clément Gosselin
• Mobile Robotics Lab (MRL), McGill
  • Perception, planning, underwater robotics, GitHub
  • Directors: Gregory Dudek, David Meger
• Making Innovative Space Technology (MIST), Polytechnique Montréal:
  • Swarm robotics, multi-robot systems, GitHub
  • Director: Giovanni Beltrame
• Mobile Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (MRASL), Polytechnique Montréal:
  • Perception, control, real-time planning and decision-making under uncertainty
  • Director: Jerome Le Ny
• Northern Robotics Laboratory (Norlab), Université Laval:
  • Autonomous vehicles, lidars, SLAM, and control, GitHub
  • Director: François Pomerleau
• Robotics and Embodied AI Lab (REAL), Université de Montréal:
  • Robotics and Embodied AI
  • Director: Liam Paull

New Brunswick

• Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, University of New Brunswick:
  • Parallel manipulators, Simulation of robotic systems
  • Director: Juan A. Carretero

Nova Scotia

• Advanced Control and Mechatronics Laboratory, Dalhousie University:
  • Robust Nonlinear Control, Teleoperation Systems, Multi-Agent Systems Cooperation, Intelligent Transportation Control,Haptics, Exoskeletons, Human Machine Interfaces, Model Predictive Control, Assistive Robotics
  • Director: Ya-Jun Pan

Newfoundland

• Autonomous Ocean Systems Laboratory, Memorial University:
  • Marine robotics, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), Unmanned Surface Craft (USC)
  • Director: Ralf Bachmayer
• Bio-inspired Robotics (BOTS), Memorial University:
  • Swarm Robotics
  • Director: Andrew Vardy, Todd Wareham, David Churchill
• Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Memorial University:
  • Sensor design, State estimation, Pack ice field detection and tracking, Nonlinear model predictive control of mobile robots, Cooperative localization of distributed multi-robotic systems, Visual-inertial navigation, Robot perception using visual attention
  • Directors: George K. Mann, Ray Gosine, Andrew Vardy
• Vision, Software and Robotics Lab (VISOR), Memorial University:

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