In late 2007, Quanser Inc. entered into an exciting R&D partnership with Canadian Surgical Technology and Advanced Robotics (CSTAR) with funding from the Ontario Centres of Excellence. The $750,000 project will see the two collaborate on improving haptics in robotic surgery.

Haptics is the technology that gives surgeons a realistic sense of touch to their robotic instruments, even when they are in another room or, increasingly likely in the future, performing telesurgery on a patient hundreds of kilometres away.

Quanser is headquartered in Markham, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. CSTAR, based in London, Ontario, was the subject of a story in the April 2006 issue of Medical Technology Watch Canada (http://medtechwatch.ca/4-1_2006/article/cstar_e.html).

Quanser is largely known as an industrial-design consulting company possessing a core competency in mechatronics—the integration of electronics, mechanical systems, and computerized motion control. Some of Quanser’s expertise has already been used in medical robotics applications including custom haptic devices for medical research, laser eye surgery, and rehabilitation for stroke victims. Quanser has also worked with MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., which you can read more about in the profile of neuroArm elsewhere in this issue.

Besides medical robotics, and thanks to funding from NRC’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP), Quanser recently began developing an unmanned vehicle that would help troops detect roadside improvised explosive devices. Other programs augment this effort such as involving advanced software for controlling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and specialized automated engine component testing equipment for the automotive sector as complemented by program funding with Defence R&D Canada and PreCarn (http://www.precarn.ca/), respectively.

Improbably for a robotics company, Quanser has contributed to the arts as well as the sciences; with famed Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood and her company Unotchit, they helped develop the LongPen, a device that allows authors to autograph their books remotely.

Haptic technology requires the application of advanced mathematics; fortunately, nearby Waterloo, Ontario, is home to Maplesoft, whose Maple software allows medical robotics engineers, as well as industrial engineers from large multinational corporations such as Toyota, to perform sophisticated calculations when designing high-tech applications.

Quanser also has several international partners in academia, notably Sweden’s prestigious Lunds Tekniska Högskola (Lund Institute of Technology), the engineering faculty of Lund University. Quanser is also gaining special prominence here in Canada as having a successful model for successive commercialization of technologies through university and government collaborations.

Quanser was founded in 1990 by Jacob Apkarian. Dr. Apkarian, a former engineering professor at the University of British Columbia and part of the Canadarm team, got his doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Toronto.

Mark Romoff, President and CEO of the Ontario Centres of Excellence, trying his hand at “banana surgery” on Quanser’s Five-Degree-of-Freedom Open-Architecture Telesurgery research package with Mayhar Fotoohi, Quanser R&D Engineer.

Further Reading:

For more information on Quanser, please see their website: http://quanser.com/

You can also sign up for Quanser’s blog: http://quanser.blogspot.com/

To read about Maplesoft: http://www.maplesoft.com/

Ontario Centres of Excellence: http://www.oce-ontario.org/

LongPen: http://www.longpen.com/