Local startups should find it easier to convert those napkin sketches of their ideas into actual products thanks to a new partnership between Invest Ottawa and a leading Canadian robotics company.
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Ottawa startups should find it easier to convert those napkin sketches of their ideas into actual products thanks to a new partnership between the city’s main economic development agency and a leading Canadian robotics company.
Invest Ottawa announced that B.C.-based InDro Robotics has taken over the operation of IO’s prototyping lab at Bayview Yards effective this week.
The state-of-the-art 6,000-square-foot facility helps emerging local companies design, test and produce working examples of their concepts using equipment such as 3D metal printers, injection molders and computational rendering technology.
“We look forward to enhancing this already excellent facility and broadening its capabilities and services,” InDro Robotics CEO Philip Reece said in a release. “This is a great fit for InDro, and we’re truly excited about the possibilities for existing and new clients.”
Invest Ottawa president and CEO Michael Tremblay said the Victoria-based firm’s expertise in developing cutting-edge robotics and drone technology will be a major asset for startups looking to test their products at the lab, which has been renamed InDro Forge.
The company’s engineering know-how will likely lead to a wider range of services being offered at the facility, which typically charges cheaper rates to startups than other fabrication shops, he added.
“I’m thrilled,” Tremblay told Techopia on Friday. “It’s a great partnership.”
The new agreement bolsters the existing ties between the two organizations, which stretch back to 2020 when InDro set up its R&D headquarters at Invest Ottawa’s Area X.O, a 1,866-acre outdoor research facility for self-driving cars, drones and other smart transportation technologies on Woodroffe Avenue.
Earlier this year, the organizations launched a drone and advanced robot training and testing facility at the research park. InDro manages the high-tech obstacle course for aerial and ground robot testing, which Invest Ottawa says is the first of its kind in Canada.
Tremblay said having access to IO’s prototyping machinery will help further accelerate R&D efforts at InDro, which has often relied on foreign suppliers for many components it will now have the ability to produce at Bayview Yards.
“What we learned with Indro over the last three years of engaging them is that they have a real business need to be able to build technical components of the robots themselves,” he said.
“When they got to know our work and they got to see what we do, it just became a really interesting dialogue,” Tremblay added, noting the two organizations felt “it would make a lot of sense for Indro Robotics to have a footprint at Bayview Yards and to essentially run the team and operate the equipment.”
Three Invest Ottawa employees will now shift over to InDro, which already employs about two dozen workers in the National Capital Region.
Tremblay said IO will still play a key role in promoting the prototyping lab in the city’s tech community. He said the facility provides a vital service to small and medium-sized businesses that lack the equipment, expertise and resources to produce proof-of-concepts to show investors or serve as models for mass-production runs.
“These sorts of services are extremely hard to come by unless you spend a lot of money,” Tremblay explained.
