Clearpath Robotics developed a life-saving robots series

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clearpath-passion-capitalists-kc-armstrong-compressorClearpath Robotics developed the idea of using robots for jobs too dangerous for humans in an innovative concept. The company now has a high profile in robotics circles, which are used in commercial applications such as mining: the Husky, the Kingfisher, the Jackal and PR2. Kingfisher is an ultra portable, mid-size unmanned surface vessel, featuring anti-fouling differential jet propulsion and an incredibly shallow profile. With a high payload and precision skid drive, Husky is the most popular all-terrain mobile robot for rapid prototyping field robotics. Jackal‘s fully integrated, weatherproof design offers unique capability in a compact package. Clearpath has also gained big inroads selling robot technology to research laboratories. Clients include the Canadian Space Agency and MIT.

Clearpath Robotics CEO, Matt Rendall, and his co-founders Ryan Gariepy, Patrick Martinson and Bryan Webb, were students at the University of Waterloo. At the time, armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan shaped the public’s perception of robots. “Everyone was talking about drones and bomb-disposal robots,” explains Rendall. “We wanted to show that you can use these same systems for a much more humanitarian purpose.”

Clearpath is one of 10 corporations named by Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions and Richardson GMP Ltd. to its current list of Canada’s Passion Capitalists, which recognizes organizations for their energy, intensity and sustainability. This year’s winners don’t just rely on their intellectual, human and financial capital to get ahead, says Paul Alofs, a former Disney and HMV executive who inspired the awards with his book Passion Capital. They have something more: “Not just passion, which is an emotion, but a tangible asset called passion capital,” says Alofs. Passion capital, he contends, is built by channeling the emotion into concrete actions that are energetic, intense and sustainable. Alofs believes Clearpath has this kind of capital “in spades.” “They believe very deeply in their product and what they’re doing,” he explains. “In their own way, they have changed a small corner of the world.”