Mecademic, founded in 2013, is building the most affordable industry-grade educational robots. We established Mecademic because we were frustrated with the options available for teaching hands-on robotics. An educational institution needed either to spend at least $20,000 on an industrial robot or to buy a hobby-grade robot arm. With DexTAR, we have created a brand-new class of professional, but low-cost academic robots.
Mecademic is a spin-off of the Control and Robotics Lab (CoRo) of the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), one of the largest and most industry-oriented engineering schools in Canada. The company was founded by Jonathan Coulombe, while completing his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Prior to joining the ÉTS, Jonathan worked for ten years as a precision machinist, crafting low-cost robot arms in his spare time. At the ÉTS, he joined Prof. Ilian Bonev's research team and developed an innovative rotary hexapod.
Professor Bonev serves as Mecademic's scientific advisor. He is best known for his work in the field of parallel robots, as well as his website, ParalleMIC. Ilian currently holds a Canada Research Chair in precision robotics and heads CoRo. He also teaches a highly practical course in industrial robotics, where his undergraduate students have access to industrial robots designed and manufactured by ABB, FANUC, KUKA, and Motoman, as well as collaborative robots made by Universal Robots, KUKA, and Kawada.
Mecademic designs, manufactures and assembles its desktop robots in downtown Montreal, Canada.
