In Nature Robotics Expansion?

Thankfully my knee surgery on Monday went well (according to the operating surgeon) so this week is mostly being spent doing computer work in bed or on the sofa. Before leaving for the surgery though, I did manage to cut out a couple of pontoon shapes with the hot wire cutter, that will be later glued together. It was a bit harder to maintain a straight line than I had expected, so some sanding and smoothing will still be required after they are glued together.

I'll also need to cut out another pair of pontoons, so that they can all be glued at the same time.

On Friday of last week I carried AMOS across the University of New Brunswick (UNB) campus on a freezing cold -26 deg C morning to meet with some professors who might be willing to provide an evaluation of AMOS with respect to its mechanical and software design. The evaluation could include up to 40 hours of their time, but would require approval from IRAP in order to get funding.

The day before that, I had a Webex conference with some people from Esri, the company that makes the ArcGIS software that AMOS uses for posting data, planning routes, etc. This was to find out if In Nature Robotics would be a good fit for their startup program. Last night I got a confirmation email that In Nature Robotics was in fact accepted, pending some document signing. This could be a good opportunity to market AMOS to other companies that are already using ArcGIS for map-based data collection of environmental data. It also comes with up to 3 years of free usage of their software and support.

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, I got an email notification from the Venture For Canada website a few days ago, to let me know that they did not actually have an automatic notification system available to let employers know when someone had applied to one of their job postings. As I got absolutely zero traction with the posting I had created last fall for the winter term, I had assumed that the posting for the spring term had gotten a similar (zero) response. But actually there were 6 applications there, some of them quite good! So stay tuned to find out if In Nature Robotics will be doubling its work-force soon...