{"id":544680,"date":"2026-03-18T14:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/544680\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T14:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:41:14","slug":"the-pulse-march-18-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/544680\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pulse: March 18, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A robotics company aiming to make the modular building industry more efficient is among the first pilots supported by the new Venture Pilots program at Edmonton Unlimited<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RoBIM Technologies<\/a> will pre-fabricate a form of truss for Honomobo<\/a>, which makes modular homes and other structures. The pilot is a way to get a foothold in a realm that has a significant market, said Bruce Alton, CEO and co-founder of RoBIM.<\/p>\n

“It gives us a reference customer to work with and an opportunity to work here in Edmonton,” Alton told Taproot ahead of a March 18 showcase<\/a> for RoBIM and four other companies. “But there are 1,100 modular builders in Canada, so they’re all potential candidates for this.”<\/p>\n

Alton’s company makes a manufacturing system called RoBIM HIVE<\/a> that combines a robotic arm, software, and “end-effectors,” which are attachments such as vacuum grippers, drilling routers, or nail guns. It shipped its first products from HIVE<\/a> in the summer of 2025, and Alton said HIVE’s functionality will grow during the Honomobo pilot, which is slated to run until June.<\/p>\n

“We’re building up this library of 25 different capabilities that we can combine together in different ways,” Alton said. “We’ve developed some of the capabilities needed for Honomobo, but this project allows us to build a few new capabilities that will solve the problem for Honomobo, and then go into our library so we can then sell to other customers who have a similar need.”<\/p>\n

RoBIM was established in 2021 and closed an oversubscribed angel investment round<\/a> in June 2025. Its customers include Connects Pre-Fab Wall Panels<\/a>, which makes wall panels for multi-unit dwellings, and Alta-Fab<\/a>, which makes dwellings and offices for worksites.<\/p>\n

Customer acquisition and technology development go hand in robotic hand for Edmonton Unlimited’s Venture Pilots program, which kicked off with its Built World Tech stream<\/a> earlier this year. A key goal for the program is to help participants find customers beyond Edmonton, as RoBIM’s pilot could do, given that the Edmonton-founded Honomobo has clients throughout North America.<\/p>\n

“There are definitely significant advantages for our startups if they partner with corporations that are operating beyond our shores,” program lead Zack Storms told Taproot. “We really want the startups to use these pilots to land more sales and grow their customer base beyond just the local region.”<\/p>\n

The first built-world cohort is expected to lead to 10 pilots, including RoBIM’s. Others include the following:<\/p>\n


\nAqtiva<\/a>, which is using a cold plasma microbubble-activated water to maximize crop yield for FreshPal Farms in Olds;
\nCandle Lithium<\/a>, which is deploying a direct lithium extraction technology based on ion-exchange to a large natural gas producer;
\nCityScan Technologies<\/a>, whose AI-powered infrastructure assessment software will be used by Tetra Tech<\/a>;
\nElementiam<\/a>, which is providing a vision-enabled software layer for industrial robots to Fusion Production Systems. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A robotics company aiming to make the modular building industry more efficient is among the first pilots supported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-544680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}