Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

New Internet of Things tech monitors and tracks everything

This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.

Share
Apr 4, 2017
Categories
Engineering & Technology
Media
Article
Profile picture for user University of Waterloo
By: University of Waterloo
Yassir Rizwan and Thomas Reidemeister, CEO and CTO of Labforge respectively
Yassir Rizwan and Thomas Reidemeister, CEO and CTO of Labforge respectively

A Waterloo startup is staking out new ground in the increasingly connected business and security worlds of robots, drones, and machine-to-machine communication with an Internet of Things platform that monitors and tracks using 99.5 per cent less bandwidth and cloud resources.

Today’s security forces, industrial facilities, and robots need constant monitoring to reduce the risk of something failing in a connected world that has little patience for delay. Labforge, a startup based in the University of Waterloo’s Velocity program in downtown Kitchener, Ont., has developed technology that gives companies the near obsessive control they need to compete. The “situational awareness systems” industry, is a market that is expected to reach $17-billion by 2020.

The innovative platform, called Labforge Navigate, uses less bandwidth and cloud resources by being virtually off the grid until a situation arises. It starts with a self-contained grid of cameras and sensors scattered throughout any industrial facility, for example. Not much happens that isn’t picked up by the 2,000 small cameras and even smaller sensors.

“You’re leveraging 2,000 computer systems to process your physical world,” says Yassir Rizwan, a University of Waterloo graduate. “You know where your forklifts are, you know where your forklift drivers are. You know where individual bins are, or what vibrations are going through on every single box.”

Rizwan and Thomas Reidemeister, another Waterloo graduate, are the chief executive officer and chief technology officer respectively of Labforge. The company’s chief scientist is Sebastian Fischmeister, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Sarah Ford, Labforge’s chief operating officer, is a former United States Marine Corps captain and a Harvard Business School scholar.

Labforge evolved from work in Waterloo’s labs

Labforge develops low-power, long-life sensors and cameras that provide “situational awareness” for robotics and commercial and security purposes. Its platform, Labforge Navigate, is a system that evolved from work done in Waterloo’s mechatronics and electrical and computer engineering laboratories.

Situational awareness tracks the position and condition of things and people, and the objects around them. The trouble is, it can churn out a lot of raw data that runs up costly charges as it flows to cloud services, gets processed and returns as useful information.

Labforge uses edge computing, storing data locally in the technology packed into its Big Edge and Small Edge platform, depending on the use case. The systems do big data processing, with machine learning and computer vision on-board. It still uses data networks, but the information, being less, consumes 99.5 per cent less bandwidth and cloud resources. Navigate also operates in areas where the GPS (Global Positioning System) cannot penetrate.

Labforge situational awareness tech saves money

“The cloud is still there, but we take out all the heavy computing,” Rizwan says. “No flow of heavy data and not computing in the cloud means saving a lot of money.”

Labforge formed at the University of Waterloo in December 2013. It began as an educational solution to train students to use embedded systems — small computers that run machinery. Students could remotely tilt or balance a beam and ball by coding commands according to “situational awareness” information fed by a camera facing the instrument. Experiments could be done without crowding students into a lab.

The company saw other purposes for the technology. Fixed or mobile, its sensors can detect such things as water leaks and overheated machinery. Slightly larger than a book of matches, the sensor units run for years without a battery recharge.

Its Big Edge cameras, smaller than a deck of cards, have fixed applications, too. But they can also be worn, relaying data points back to an operations centre to position the wearer within a 3D map of the surrounding space — without using GPS or any pre-set infrastructure.

It’s an attractive tool for police and security purposes. Initially, Labforge placed much of its focus on that market. Now about 80 per cent of its business comes from industrial/commercial clients; 20 per cent from law enforcement and security.

“We decided to use industrial applications, robotics and shorter sales cycles, to build up the platform, as we continue to pursue the long term security markets” said Reidemeister. “It works out pretty well. Without having raised a cent of external investment, we had pretty significant revenue in 2015.”

Tags
Innovation Storybook
Author(s)
Profile picture for user University of Waterloo
University of Waterloo
Follow

Waterloo goes beyond the classroom, to a place where experience is the teacher. Beyond problems to solutions that address social, technical and economic needs. Beyond the laboratory, to the research that propels industries, organizations and society.

https://uwaterloo.ca/

Related Stories

Spliced image, from left to right: a seismometer on mars, a heap of red rhubarb stalks with green leaves, a copper roof of the Canaian Parliament

3 Things you should know about marsquakes, the value of urine, and the chemistry of rhubarb

A spliced photo, from left to right: Shaun the Sheep in front of a model of ESA’s European Service Module, a top view into a red bucket containing thousands of light-brown, rod-shaped pellets, and a toddler wearing a wool hat and wool sweater holds a grownup’s finger.

3 things you should know about why wool keeps us warm, and about its surprising uses in the garden and in space.

A Woolery Machine Company runway de-icing device in action at Cologne-Wahn airport, Cologne, West Germany. Anon., “Ancillary Review – Flame-throwing – On Ice.” The Aeroplane and Commercial Aviation News, 28 February 1963, 29.

Come on, PB, light my fire. Try to set the ice on fire: A peek at the American firm Woolery Machine Company and some of its ideas and products

Three images side by side: a toilet bowl expelling a cloud of droplets, a gloved hand holding a test tube containing a small plant, and an infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io showing spots of volcanic activity covering the moon.

3 things you should know about flushing the toilet, artificial photosynthesis, and volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon

Headshots of 33 women, showing the diversity of women in AI and Robotics

Women in AI & Robotics: An interview with Founder and CEO, Sheila Beladinejad

Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Sergeant Bob Electro caught in the act of saluting the commanding officer of RCAF Station Clinton, Group Captain John Gordon Mathieson, Clinton, Ontario. Anon., “Six-Year-Old Sergeant.” The North Bay Nugget, 7 January 1963, 15.

Dōmo arigatō, gunsō Electro, mata au hi made: The electronic adventures of Royal Canadian Air Force / Canadian Armed Forces Sergeant Bob Electro

The 10-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 3

The 3.75- / 3.5-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 2

The 10-inch flight impact simulator of the National Research Council of Canada at some point during its long career, Uplands / Ottawa, Ontario. NRC.

A great Canadian success story you should know about: A brief look at the National Research Council of Canada flight impact simulators donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Part 1

A rear view of a person wearing a yellow coat and backpack in winter, a close-up view of bright red poinsettias with small yellow central flowers.

Two things you should know about the science of wind chill, and the Orion spacecraft's selfies.

Three images side by side: A little girl smells a sunflower, the DART spacecraft’s impact into the asteroid Dimorphos, and a candy apple

3 things you should know about how the DART spacecraft changed the orbit of an asteroid, how we have more than five senses, and how the science of caramel can make you a better cook!

Colourful Eckert IV map projection generated by AI

Art to Critically Examine AI & Robotics

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners