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Lions, tigers and … robots? Made-in-Ottawa tech delivering food to animals at Toronto Zoo

September 27, 2024

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A new species of robotics technology born and bred in Ottawa is serving up food to animals at the Toronto Zoo as part of a pilot project its backers hope will pave the way for driverless delivery in cities across Canada. The four-wheeled, electric-powered robots, called BUBS, were designed and built in Ottawa and put through their paces at Area X.O, a state-of-the-art outdoor research facility for self-driving cars, drones and other smart transportation technologies on Woodroffe Avenue. Now, the company behind the project, Waterloo-based Real Life Robotics, is using its robots to transport food to inhabitants of the Toronto Zoo. The park, which is home to 3,000 animals, is piloting ways to reduce its carbon footprint, with a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2030. It’s hoping Real Life Robotics’ last-mile delivery platform can reduce the costs and greenhouse gas emissions associated with transporting between one and 1.5 tonnes of food each day to habitats that are spread across more than 500 acres. “This pilot partnership with Real Life Robotics will help us enhance efficiency and productivity and demonstrate how the Toronto Zoo is embracing sustainable technologies to become a globally leading conservation campus,” the zoo’s CEO, Dolf DeJong, said in a statement. Real Life Robotics’ Ottawa-based head of growth, Sharif Virani, said the zoo provides an ideal testing ground for the robots, which have a range of about three kilometres due to current limits on their battery life. “It mimics exactly what food delivery would look like in a public situation,” said Virani, adding the pilot program is expected to continue into 2025 as the company works to fine-tune its driverless technology. Real Life Robotics has been developing BUBS for more than two years. The devices, which are about 1.2 metres high by a metre wide, can carry about 90 litres of food and other items. The driverless vehicles employ GPS and special AI-powered cameras to map out their routes and detect obstacles along the way. While autonomous food delivery is an obvious market for the cutting-edge machines, Virani said the robots are also capable of gathering a treasure trove of geospatial data about municipal infrastructure – for example, the location of cracked sidewalks or broken fences – that could be instantly transmitted to public officials, saving time and money for cash-strapped local governments. To that end, Real Life Robotics is pursuing partnerships with several Canadian communities, including Markham in the Greater Toronto Area, Kitchener-Waterloo and Victoria, to test “smart-city” applications for its software. While Ottawa is not yet working with the startup, its local connections run deep. Virani is its only Ottawa-based employee, but BUBS was built by B.C.-based InDro Robotics in the company’s 6,000-square-foot prototyping lab at Bayview Yards, which contains equipment such as 3D metal printers, injection molders and computational rendering technology. Meanwhile, InDro Robotics CEO Philip Reece is a major investor in Real Life Robotics, and his firm’s self-driving technology, which was developed at Area X.O, is guiding the vehicles. The company has also received funding from several other angel investors as well as the federal government-backed Canadian Food Innovation Network and London, Ont.-based RHA Ventures. Virani said the firm is seeking additional capital as it looks to take its homegrown technology to more markets. “Building a company like this and commercializing it and growing it in Canada as a Canadian has been really important to me,” he said.