Breakout:
Building a Robotics-Ready Ontario and Canada: A Blueprint for a National Network of Robotics Demonstration and Adoption Centres
Robotics adoption is where Canada's industrial productivity, economic competitiveness, and global standing will be won or lost. To keep pace with initiatives like the UK's Robotics Adoption Hubs, Canada must close a critical adoption infrastructure and training gap. That means moving from scattered, one-off innovation projects toward a coordinated, national network of robotics demonstration and adoption centres—open-access facilities that let companies see, trial, and deploy robots before they buy, with benefits that compound for Ontario and for Canada as a whole.
In this session, we will explore the roles partners play in anchoring adoption, paired with a real-world concept for a turnkey demonstration and adoption centre—featuring vetted training programs and matched equipment donations designed to secure infrastructure funding and derisk robotics adoption for Canadian SMEs.
This session is designed for:
- Robotics technology providers looking to scale
- Small to Medium enterprises looking to automate and need guidance on how to start
- Champions of demonstration and adoption centres in key verticals (manufacturing/logistics, defence, healthcare, agriculture) seeking industry partners for adoption-focused infrastructure and training grants.
- Municipalities, economic development agencies, and innovation hubs focused on building robotics-ready infrastructure that serves Ontario and Canada.
- Policy makers looking to actively spur robot deployment and fill Canada's infrastructure gap to shape the future of the robotics ecosystem.
Hosted by:
Key Participants & Represented Organizations:
Coming Soon
From Strategy to Execution: Key Discussion Topics
Adoption doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens where technology providers, companies, innovation hubs, municipalities, researchers, and policy makers collaborate to create the right conditions for success. The questions this session tackles: what does it actually take to make Ontario—and Canada— “adoption-ready” for robotics, and how do we build demonstration, and adoption centres whose impact reaches well beyond their four walls?
The discussion will center around key topics:
- Turnkey Model: A practical framework showing how TMZ, City of Brampton and CRC are partnering on the Adoption and Demonstration centre. This model shows how to drive adoption and benefit for the benefit of companies across Ontario and the country.
- Partnerships for a Robotics-Ready Ontario and Canada: An exploration of the physical infrastructure, municipal and provincial policies, and post-secondary alignments required to successfully host and sustain a dedicated demonstration and adoption centre.
- Adoption Centre Foundations: A collaborative mapping exercise to begin identifying existing facility strengths across Ontario and Canada, flagging immediate gaps, and crowdsourcing actionable data for policy makers. We will actively brainstorm which market verticals are ripe for adoption, flag high-potential partners, and map out the first steps to initiate conversations with prospective Adoption Centre champions.
Expected Outcomes & Action Pillars
This session focuses on four critical levers of change, establishing the foundation for long-term deliverables:
- Federal & Provincial Guidelines and Funding Criteria for Adoption Centres: Developing the specific inputs from funders across Ontario and Canada needed to establish high-impact, deployment-focused robotics centres, grounded in global benchmarks like the UKRI model.
- The Robotics Adoption and Demonstration Centre Model: Creating a standardized framework for operational success—vetted by robotics providers who understand end-user needs (in manufacturing and logistics) —covering physical facility design, partner coordination, and program delivery that can be replicated nationwide.
- Partnership and Match Framework: Building tactical partnerships that leverage industry robot donations and in-kind support to strengthen infrastructure grant applications and stretch public funding further.
- Initiating Vertical-specific Adoption Centre Working Groups: In order to drive adoption in further verticals in robotics, the goal of this table is to initiate conversation for the creation of Adoption centre working groups in other verticals like healthcare, service robotics, agriculture, etc.
Interested in our breakout sessions?
Register for the symposium today to gain access to all breakout tracks.
