1517 supports teams with pre-seed and seed funding for technology startups. Their focus is on makers, hackers, and scientists interested in working outside tracked institutions because we believe that the path geared towards higher education is not for all. They motivate people to work on what they’re passionate about, to learn by doing, and to create new technologies.

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Optimotive

Optimotive builds robotic platforms as a service for hazardous, laborious, or otherwise extreme environments.

Optimotive Technologies Inc. is a company that specializes in developing mobile robots for automation in industries such as construction, oil and gas, and mining. The company's primary product is IRIS, an automated robot designed to perform data collection tasks on construction sites. IRIS is capable of 3D-scanning, capturing 360-degree photos, and conducting inspections. Optimotive's approach focuses on task automation rather than job automation, aiming to enhance worker productivity by handling mundane, repetitive, and laborious tasks. The company's technology is designed to operate in challenging environments characterized by mud, dust, and unpredictability. Optimotive's goal is to create a second tier of the labor force, with robots working alongside human workers to address the challenges posed by a declining and aging workforce in North American economies.

Optimotive – Robotics in Extreme Environments

Windsor entrepreneur hopes to change construction sites with a robot

About us – Optimotive

Augmenting the mining value chain with technology and automation

Mining Tech

Leading the Automobility Charge: Optimotive Technologies Launches New Autonomous Testbed

Optimotive Technologies Inc. is a company that specializes in developing mobile robots for automation in industries such as construction, oil and gas, and mining. The company's primary product is IRIS, an automated robot designed to perform data collection tasks on construction sites. IRIS is capable of 3D-scanning, capturing 360-degree photos, and conducting inspections. Optimotive's approach focuses on task automation rather than job automation, aiming to enhance worker productivity by handling mundane, repetitive, and laborious tasks. The company's technology is designed to operate in challenging environments characterized by mud, dust, and unpredictability. Optimotive's goal is to create a second tier of the labor force, with robots working alongside human workers to address the challenges posed by a declining and aging workforce in North American economies.

Oxbotica (also known as Oxa) is a British autonomous vehicle software developer founded in 2014 by Oxford professors Paul Newman and Ingmar Posner. The company has developed a suite of autonomous vehicle software products, including Oxbotica Driver, Oxbotica Cloud, and Oxbotica MetaDriver. Oxbotica's Universal Autonomy technology aims to enable any vehicle, regardless of size or location, to operate autonomously, safely, and sustainably. The company's software can be applied to various industries and use cases, including mining, energy, goods delivery, shared passenger transportation, agriculture, and airports.Oxbotica's technology integrates a range of autonomous vehicle functionalities, such as device drivers, mapping, obstacle detection, sensor perception, and prediction. The company's MetaDriver tool utilizes artificial intelligence in the metaverse to generate simulated scenarios for testing autonomous vehicle operations without physical driving. In May 2022, Oxbotica achieved a significant milestone by conducting Europe's first zero-occupancy trial of a fully autonomous electric vehicle on publicly accessible roads in Oxford.The company has established partnerships with various organizations to accelerate the adoption of autonomous driving solutions. For instance, Oxbotica is collaborating with ZF to develop self-driving passenger shuttles for airports, and with BP to automate vehicles for wind and solar farms. The company has also worked with Ocado Group to streamline goods delivery processes using autonomous vehicles.Key customers and partnershipsOxbotica has formed strategic partnerships with several companies across different sectors. The company is working with BP to develop autonomous vehicles for use in energy applications, particularly in wind and solar farms. Ocado Group, a leading online grocery technology company, has partnered with Oxbotica to explore autonomous delivery solutions.In the mining sector, Oxbotica is advancing an "open autonomy" mining solution in Canada in collaboration with Wenco International Mining Systems. The company has also partnered with AppliedEV to conduct autonomous vehicle trials.Oxbotica has established a collaboration with Google Cloud to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous software platform globally. This partnership aims to combine Google Cloud's expertise in cloud infrastructure with Oxbotica's autonomous vehicle software to create scalable, safe, and reliable autonomous driving solutions for businesses with transportation in their value chain.

Uptake is a leader in predictive analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) for the industrial sector, focusing on translating data into smarter operations. The company's flagship product, Uptake Fleet, is a comprehensive predictive maintenance solution for the transportation industry. Uptake Fleet leverages advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to predict vehicle failures, optimize maintenance strategies, and improve overall fleet performance.
Uptake Fleet's capabilities include Work Order Analytics, which enables users to predict vehicle failures down to the component level using existing internal work order data. The platform provides component-level survival curves, aggregate and individual unit component analytics, and allows users to set thresholds for specific vehicle components to create alerts and influence risk scores. Uptake Fleet also supports various sensor analytics endpoints, including outputs from the Geotab Electrical System Rating (ESR) module, to generate insights on the health of critical system components.
The company's technology has demonstrated significant benefits for its users, including a 30-day lead time in detecting leaks compared to traditional manual inspections, an 83% reduction in significant tire failures, a 5% improvement in fuel economy, and a 91% improvement in safe tire driving days. Uptake's solutions have been recognized by industry analysts and publications, including Gartner, Verdantix, the World Economic Forum, CNBC, and Forbes.
Key customers and partnerships
Uptake has established partnerships with several industry leaders to expand its reach and capabilities. In July 2023, the company partnered with Platform Science, a connected vehicle platform, to extend data-driven insights and predictive maintenance capabilities to some of the country's largest vehicle fleets. This collaboration allows Platform Science users to access Uptake Fleet through the Virtual Vehicle platform.
In February 2023, Uptake entered into a commercial agreement with Daimler Truck North America (DTNA), enabling the use of innovative data-as-a-service (DaaS) technology to power Uptake Fleet. This partnership allows DTNA customers to leverage Uptake's data-driven insights to help reduce unplanned fleet downtime and maintenance costs.
Uptake's customer base includes prominent organizations such as United Road, a leader in heavy-haul transportation services in North America, which deployed Uptake Fleet across its fleet to cut maintenance costs and increase driver mileage. The company has also worked with Caterpillar and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiaries, demonstrating its ability to serve diverse industries and large-scale operations.

Uptake

KoBold Metals is a California-based artificial intelligence-powered mineral exploration company founded in 2018. The company utilizes AI, machine learning, and cloud computing techniques to assess the composition of the subsurface and identify potential mineral deposits, particularly focusing on critical materials needed for electric vehicle batteries and clean energy technologies. KoBold's primary focus is on discovering and developing deposits of metals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel.
At the core of KoBold's technology is TerraShed, a data platform that aggregates and structures large scientific data collections, making them quickly available for analysis. The company employs various proprietary modules and machine learning models to guide decisions throughout the exploration process. KoBold's approach combines AI systems with geoscience expertise to determine what information will best reduce uncertainty in finding minable ore deposits.
In July 2024, KoBold announced a significant copper discovery in Zambia, estimated to be the largest in over a decade. The company's Mingomba project is expected to produce at least 300,000 tons of copper annually once fully operational, with an estimated value of billions of dollars per year for decades. The deposit boasts copper ore grades of more than 5%, significantly higher than the industry average of around 0.6%.
KoBold's exploration methods have shown promising results. During a 2022 field season in northern Quebec, the company's AI-guided approach led to hitting nickel-sulfide mineralization in eight out of 10 drill holes, a success rate approximately 10 times better than the industry average for similarly isolated drill holes. The company currently has more than 60 exploration-stage projects across several countries.

KoBold Metals

MineSense Technologies Ltd. is a Vancouver-based company that develops smart technologies for the metallic mining industry. The company's flagship products, ShovelSense and BeltSense, provide real-time, sensor-based ore sorting solutions for mines. ShovelSense is a sensor installed on mining equipment that scans and estimates the grade of material in every shovel and bucket, while BeltSense is used on conveyance at different points of the mine's downstream operations. These technologies enable mine operators to make real-time decisions early in the mining process, routing ore to the mill for valuable mineral extraction or to the waste pile.
MineSense's solutions aim to improve ore grade control, operational profitability, and carbon intensity across the metals mining industry. The company's technology allows mining companies to see the value of material as it is being mined, bucket by bucket, addressing challenges such as depletion of high-quality metal resources and increasing political and environmental barriers. By more accurately sorting ore from waste, MineSense's technologies decrease environmental impacts through reduced greenhouse gas emissions, water and energy consumption per unit of metal recovered, and enable mines to optimize the use of resources.
Initially focused on copper mining, MineSense has expanded its capabilities to other base metals and is developing methods to predict non-metal material characteristics, such as ore hardness. The company's technology can increase metal recovery materially, with production from operating mines increasing by 5% to 25% on existing infrastructure. In December 2023, MineSense launched the MineSense Data Portal, a platform that leverages real-time data from ShovelSense and BeltSense to provide mining operators with data-driven insights for mine-to-mill optimization.

MineSense

SafeAI is a Santa Clara, California-based company that develops autonomous solutions for heavy equipment in the construction and mining industries. Founded in 2017 by Bibhrajit Halder, SafeAI specializes in retrofitting existing vehicles with autonomous technology, regardless of manufacturer or vehicle type. The company's core product is an OEM-agnostic retrofit kit that includes hardware and proprietary autonomy software, enabling equipment owners to convert their existing fleets into self-operating robotic assets. SafeAI's autonomous platform utilizes advanced multimodal sensors, including LiDAR, radar, and cameras, along with onboard processing power to enable real-time decision-making.
In December 2023, SafeAI and Japanese construction company Obayashi unveiled what they claim is the world's first haul truck retrofitted to be both autonomous and electric. The companies converted a Caterpillar 725 articulated dump truck, demonstrating the potential for combining autonomy and electrification in heavy industry. SafeAI's technology aims to improve safety, productivity, and environmental performance on work sites. The company estimates that autonomy alone can boost environmental performance by up to 13%, while swapping diesel for electricity can cut net lifecycle emissions by over 60%.
SafeAI has also developed the SafeAI Autonomous Framework (SAF), which it describes as the first operating system purpose-built for heavy industry. In August 2023, SAF achieved ASIL D certification, the highest safety integrity level in the industry. This certification reinforces SafeAI's commitment to safety and validates its efforts to create a highly reliable operating system for heavy industry applications.

SafeAI

Hardware and software solutions that use technology such as AI/ML, LiDAR, and computer vision to discover sites with mining prospects

Solutions that use data from IoT sensors, site logs, and other data points to provide insights, simulations, and 3D representations of a mining site that can be used to visualize environments and create geological models

Solutions that use AI/ML, geospatial imagery, and even novel approaches such as vibration analysis to provide insights, support predictive maintenance, and help optimize worker productivity, fleet utilization, and other site resources, such as raw material inventory

Solutions to retrofit site vehicles with autonomous hardware and other autonomous and remote-controlled tools that support workflows, such as underground mapping and remote data capture

Providers of devices such as sensors to monitor real-time location and other environmental variables in an underground environment

Leverages robotics technology to automate certain vehicles and machinery to support mining activities

Leverages AI/ML to capture data from various sites and monitor data and information feeds

Autonomous machinery and equipment for underground mines and dark and constricted spaces

Optimotive

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