Press Releases
Braintech Teams with ABB, Toyota, and University Of BC
Group formalizes project to develop robot vision system for random bin picking with funding assistance from Precarn
November 30, 2006
NORTH VANCOUVER, BC - "This is a role model for the type of projects Precarn likes to invest in." said Paul Johnston, President and CEO of Precarn Incorporated. "It is a technically difficult problem being tackled through collaboration among a group of innovative private sector entrepreneurs, leading-edge university researchers and engaged end users. The involvement of end users in projects provides a market test - a key pre-condition for successful commercialization. Participation by universities applies Canada's best minds to develop solutions."
Babak Habibi, the COO of Braintech describes our approach as, "Research-fueled development" and says, "We have over 150 mission critical, vision-guided systems deployed in some of the world's largest automakers and all of these systems work because we have always made a point of doing our homework and building the right underlying vision science. By comparison, our competition is generally focused on engineering discrete solutions that use old techniques and rely heavily on electro-mechanical fixturing and compliance to manage part movements especially in 3D. These approaches although sometimes workable for individual applications, are not scalable since each system requires one-off development and engineering. The bin picking project is an important example of how we like to approach problem solving that is, from the core."
Elizabeth Croft, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at UBC states: "This is an excellent opportunity to apply our robotics research expertise to an important industrial problem. Braintech and the UBC Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory have truly complementary research teams providing the perfect setting for university-industry technology development and transfer, as well as exceptional training and industry interaction opportunities for graduate students.
Owen Jones, the CEO of Braintech states, "Our internal analysis projects a market size of over 450,000 systems, just for the automotive sector and worth approximately $1Billion in software revenues. With Precarn's financial support and in collaboration with UBC, ABB and Toyota we expect to release our first commercial system by the end of 2007".
About Braintech (OTCBB: BRHI)
For more information, visit www.braintech.com
About ABB
ABB's Robotic, Automotive and Manufacturing group is a leading supplier of robots, robotic systems and automation systems to the automotive, manufacturing and consumer industries. With more than 130,000 robots installed worldwide and more than 5,000 employees, ABB is a global leader in flexible factory automation. This group is part of ABB Ltd. (www.abb.com) who is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 102,000 people. The company's U.S. operations employ about 9,000 in manufacturing and other facilities in 40 states. For more information, visit www.abb.com
About Precarn Incorporated
For more information, visit www.precarn.ca
About Toyota Motor Manufacturing
For more information, visit http://www.toyota.com/about/operations/manufacturing
About the UBC Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory
For more information, visit www.mech.ubc.ca/~caris
* Denotes a required field
