Breakout:
Agentic Robotics for Canadian Transportation & Logistics
This breakout invites Canadian robotics researchers, industry partners, and government stakeholders working across autonomous driving, warehousing, and automotive manufacturing to explore how a coordinated national innovation network can accelerate the development, validation, and commercialization of agentic robotics — systems combining large-language-model reasoning with physical robotics and advanced perception — across Canada's transportation and logistics sectors.
Hosted by:
Key Participants & Organizations:
Coming soon
The Need for a Strategic Research Fund
Canada already has strong foundations to build on: world-class research groups in physical AI and field robotics (Waslander, Dudek, and Pomerleau will lead), industry anchors such as Waabi and Rockwell Automation / OTTO Motors, and Vector’s AI and NGen's advanced manufacturing superclusters. Despite this, Canada has too often seen its innovations commercialized abroad or its talent migrate overseas, leaving a fragmented innovation-to-market pipeline and an SME-heavy industry base that still relies primarily on manual processes or brittle automation.
The immediate goal is to build support for the proposed Strategic Research Fund (SRF) initiative organized by Richard Gold (McGill), which would expand industry-linked innovation hubs co-locating leading researchers in physical AI and agentic reasoning with market leaders and incubators, and to identify near-term opportunities to activate existing research relationships and testbeds ahead of a full funding submission. This SRF will lay the foundation for a follow-on New Frontiers Research Fund – Transformation (NFRF-T) application co-led by Steven Waslander (Toronto) and Richard Gold to fund groundbreaking research in the same direction.
Objectives
- Open dialogue among academic, industry, and government stakeholders on a shared strategy for agentic robotics in transportation, warehousing, and automotive manufacturing
- Develop partnerships and recruit team members to support both applications
- Identify potential market opportunities and pilot partnerships for startups and SMEs across driving, warehouse orchestration, and factory automation
- Share success stories in testbed development, tech transfer, and industry-academia partnership from existing Canadian and international efforts
Expected Outcomes
- Shared understanding of Canada's strengths and gaps in agentic robotics for transportation and logistics, and opportunities for cross-institutional partnership
- Identified areas for co-investment among academic, industry, and government partners
- A refined list of testbeds, industry anchors, and funding pathways to support the SRF proposal ahead of submission
Interested in our breakout sessions?
Register for the symposium today to gain access to all breakout tracks.
