{"id":58550,"date":"2015-08-10T09:50:25","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T01:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=58550"},"modified":"2025-01-19T10:31:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T15:31:06","slug":"b-c-companys-agile-robots-crawling-where-humans-cant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/08\/10\/b-c-companys-agile-robots-crawling-where-humans-cant\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. company\u2019s agile robots crawling where humans can\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Inuktun<\/a>
Inuktun Services Ltd.\u2019s remotely operated vehicle or ROV (Screengrab from Inuktun’s video<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What started as a fun project for two techies on Vancouver Island more than 25 years ago has now become an industry leader in robotic crawlers.<\/p>\n

Inuktun Services Ltd.\u2019s remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, have combed through the radioactive wreckage of a tsunami-hit nuclear plant in Japan, assisted in search and rescue efforts after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and are being used by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

But despite its international success, the Nanaimo, B.C.-based company remains little known at home.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s largely because most of its products are sold outside of Canada, said company CEO Colin Dobell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not really well-known locally and that\u2019s OK,\u201d he said in a phone interview from the company\u2019s head office.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re more export than anything…oil and gas and nuclear would be our two biggest markets. But we get into a lot of other kind of oddball stuff too that we never even imagined our equipment would be used for.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

Inuktun\u2019s agile robots are used to access confined spaces and hazardous environments that humans can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Their clients range from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which used crawlers to inspect inside a natural gas pipe after a fatal pipeline explosion in California five years ago, to Starbucks, which bought cameras to inspect coffee beans on a conveyor.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Inuktun announced it was sending a custom snake-like crawler to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to assess the damage from 2011\u2019s massive earthquake and tsunami.<\/p>\n

After the 9\/11 attacks \u201cwe sent robotic equipment to Ground Zero to do search and rescue and search and recovery efforts,\u201d Dobell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few years ago, we sold a whole bunch of equipment to the U.S. military to actually use in cross-border tunnel investigation in U.S.-Mexico borders and also overseas in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Dobell said the most compelling stuff is top secret. The company is kept quiet by big-name clients that don\u2019t want the public to know what they’re using the technology for.<\/p>\n

When Inuktun began in B.C. in 1989, its owners had no idea they would be signing non-disclosure agreements with some of the world\u2019s most prominent organizations.<\/p>\n

Dobell said that part materialized \u201clargely by accident,\u201d after Inuktun\u2019s co-founders Terry Knight and Al Robinson \u2013 both now retired \u2013 started the company \u201cas kind of a fun project to take them into retirement.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they started they were building these little swimming ROVs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea being you would sit on your boat, throw it over the edge and watch the crabs or chase fish or pick up the keys you dropped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobell, who came on board in 1996, said the product was too expensive for a recreational market, but got the attention of the nuclear industry, and spawned the creation of different robotic systems to meet customer demand over the years.<\/p>\n

The company no longer does underwater work \u2013 it sold that technology off to a company in the U.S. \u2013 and is now focusing on confined space crawlers, cameras and inspection equipment.<\/p>\n

Domestic sales typically account for less than 10 per cent of Inuktun\u2019s business, Dobell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to be a little better known in Canada, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What started as a fun project for two techies on Vancouver Island more than 25 years ago has now become …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":58551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-58550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-original","mauthors-cara-mckenna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285778,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58550\/revisions\/285778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}