Advancing AI-driven robotics research and training
The tour began with a robotics showcase hosted by the University of Toronto Robotics Institute in the two-storey drone teaching lab in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship.
The showcase featured three themes: drones, mobility, and social robots. These areas represent key intersections of AI, robotics and real-world applications.
Experiential learning through student-designed drones
Each year, students pursuing the Engineering Science Robotics major design, build and test their own drones as part of a hands-on capstone course. It is designed to give students the opportunity to apply their technical knowledge to a real-world challenge by developing a complete robotics hardware and software system.
Course instructor, Professor Jonathan Kelly from the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Collaborative Robotics, and undergraduate students, Adam Mong, Kevin Ni, Michelle Sun and William Wen, presented their custom-built drone to Minister Quinn, explaining the engineering behind their design.
This project is just one example of how U of T provides experiential learning opportunities to undergraduate students in STEM.
Developing algorithms for autonomous indoor navigation
Autonomous vehicles have cross-sector applications, including remote delivery, logistics and environmental monitoring. Graduate researcher, Hshmat Sahak, demonstrated his work on indoor navigation in Professor Tim Barfoot’s lab, which builds on Barfoot’s commercialized Visual Teach & Repeat (VT&R) navigation framework.
Sahak’s research integrates smart rerouting with VT&R to help robots safely detect obstacles and plan optimized paths in GPS-denied or noisy environments — capabilities essential for real-world deployment.
Supporting older adults through human-robot interaction
The Minister also met with Professor Goldie Nejat from the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and the Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Assistive and Collaborative Robots, and graduate researchers, Abi Nevo, Souren Pashangpour, Haitong Wang and Matthew Lisondra, who are developing socially assistive robots designed to support older adults with daily tasks, provide companionship and facilitate cognitive engagement.
The students demonstrated the QT robot, showing how its large-language-model-powered interface enables personalized conversations, and presented an expressive mobile manipulator. This technology is capable of following a user and assisting with simple household tasks such as holding tools.
“Robotics hardware, or physical AI, is essential to fully realizing the potential of artificial intelligence to support the province’s economic growth,” says Tim Barfoot, Director, University of Toronto Robotics Institute.
“We look forward to continued collaboration with policymakers to support excellence in STEM education and accelerating the adoption of physical AI across Ontario’s priority sectors.”
Demonstrating real-world applications for medical device technologies at the Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT)
Open to both academic and private sector users, the CRAFT Tissue Foundry is a biosafety level 2 lab that supports the development of medical technologies including biofabrication, diagnostics and organ-on-a-chip technologies.
Co-led by Professor Axel Guenther, Professor at the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, CRAFT represents a strategic partnership between the University of Toronto, Unity Health Toronto, and the National Research Council of Canada, and supports the entire value chain of manufacturing microfluidics-based products in Canada.
CRAFT research focuses on translating innovations in disease diagnostics and bioanalytics, miniature human organ models as alternatives to animal testing and biofabrication into the Canadian industry and healthcare systems.
Tiny devices with a big impact
Minister Quinn met with Bernadette Ng, graduate student in Professor Aaron Wheeler’s lab in the Department of Chemistry and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, and Emine Dide Yurtal, graduate student in Professor Milica Radisic’s lab in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry.
Ng showed the Minister one of the digital microfluidic devices she worked on as a student, which contains small electrodes that can carry liquids across surfaces in a programmable way. These technologies enable the development of low-cost diagnostic devices with medical applications, as well as enabling chemical analysis in a scalable format.
Dide demonstrated one of the organ-on-a-chip devices developed in the Radisic Lab. These powerful devices represent models for human tissues such as the heart, kidneys, lungs or other parts of the body. They can be used as a more human-like alternative to animal testing for the development of new medicines, and coupled with new developments in biomedical research, such as artificial intelligence, represent a powerful tool for drug discovery.
From discovery to translation
Recent PhD graduate, winner of the 2026 Desjardins Startup Prize (late category) and founder of startup VRiT Inc., Sushant Singh, along with Avantika Vaidya, from Professor Axel Guenther’s research group, demonstrated a handheld bioprinter: INSITE.
INSITE has the potential to revolutionize wound and burn treatments. It eliminates the need for autografts by printing personalized bioinks for skin grafts — useful in cases where these may not be readily available. This technology has also been demonstrated in zero gravity environments with applications for medical needs in remote settings.
Following a brief demonstration by Sushant, Minister Quinn used the printer to print collagen sheets on paper. This is illustrative of how CRAFT strives to build user-friendly devices, bringing medical treatments to those that need them.
“Toronto is one of the global centres in developing microsystems for applications in the life sciences and in medicine,” says Axel Guenther, Co-Director, CRAFT.
“The 450 trainees and 90 research groups active in CRAFT design, prototype and validate their microdevices along with industry in open research facilities that are established and maintained with support from Canadian federal funding and Ontario provincial programs, such as the Ontario Research Fund.”
– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Robotics Institute on March 18, 2026 by Amanda Hacio and Jennifer Doucet.