1. Objectives:
Precarn is a consortium of Canadian companies. Precarn is dedicated to precompetitive research in AI and robotics. Projects generally involve two member companies and a university. The intent is to develop technology that can be exploited by all member companies, and secondarily by other Canadian companies. To aid in facilitating exploitation, a separate project was organized under the exploitation committee, to help member companies and others understand the technologies, and to recognize and prepare for integrating the technologies into their own operations. In other words, the objective of the exploitation component is to help member companies re-engineer parts of their processes to take advantage of the new technologies. A second component is to investigate requirements arising from anticipated applications of the technologies and to feed them into the research projects.
2. The technological problems & risks:
In order to apply new technologies successfully, one has to understand the applicability of the technologies in redesigning processes. One also has to manage the projects of applying the technologies, where a component of the project consists in leading edge research.
A second area of problems and risks arises in developing technologies, where it is easy to "miss the boat" unless the requirements for the eventual applications are understood clearly.
3. Personnel:
Rainer von Königslöw acted as "industrial awareness" consultant, reporting to the Exploitation Committee.
4. Project status & plans:
The project involved developing and presenting feasibility prototypes to demonstrate the feasibility of applying the technologies. The majority of the activity was funded by NRC, the National Research Council. A second component involved interacting with NRC, the member companies and other potential users of the technologies to explore how the technologies might address their needs, and to help them understand the potential applications and benefits.