VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 30, 2006 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Braintech, Inc. (OTCBB:BRHI), a leading provider of Vision Guided Robotic ("VGR") software, announced today that it has completed agreements with ABB, Inc. Robot Div. (Auburn Hill, MI), Toyota Motor Manufacturing (Buffalo, West Virginia) and University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC) to research, develop, and pilot robot systems that can distinguish and handle parts randomly stored in a bin. The project, led by Braintech, brings together advanced scientific research capabilities from an advanced robotics & intelligent systems R&D group at the University of BC, robotic systems engineering capabilities from ABB, and factory floor process knowledge from Toyota engineers. Funding assistance for this project is provided by Precarn Incorporated, an independent not-for-profit company that funds the pre-commercial development of leading-edge technologies for projects that use its successful collaborative R&D model.
"This is a role model for the type of projects Precarn likes to invest in," said Paul Johnston, President and CEO of Precarn Incorporated. "It is a technically difficult problem being tackled through collaboration among a group of innovative private sector entrepreneurs, leading-edge university researchers and engaged end users. The involvement of end users in projects provides a market test - a key pre-condition for successful commercialization. Participation by universities applies Canada's best minds to develop solutions."
Babak Habibi, the COO of Braintech describes our approach as, "Research-fueled development" and said, "We have over 150 mission critical, vision-guided systems deployed in some of the world's largest automakers and all of these systems work because we have always made a point of doing our homework and building the right underlying vision science. By comparison, our competition is generally focused on engineering discrete solutions that use old techniques and rely heavily on electro-mechanical fixturing and compliance to manage part movements especially in 3D. These approaches although sometimes workable for individual applications, are not scalable since each system requires one-off development and engineering. The bin picking project is an important example of how we like to approach problem solving that is, from the core."
Elizabeth Croft, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at UBC stated: "This is an excellent opportunity to apply our robotics research expertise to an important industrial problem. Braintech and the UBC Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory have truly complementary research teams providing the perfect setting for university-industry technology development and transfer, as well as exceptional training and industry interaction opportunities for graduate students."
Owen Jones, the CEO of Braintech stated, "Our internal analysis projects a market size of over 450,000 systems, just for the automotive sector and worth approximately $1Billion in software revenues. With Precarn's financial support and in collaboration with UBC, ABB and Toyota we expect to release our first commercial system by the end of 2007."
About ABB: http://www.abb.com/product/us/9AAC910011.aspx
About Precarn Incorporated: http://www.precarn.ca
About Toyota Motor Manufacturing: http://www.toyota.com/about/operations/manufacturing/index.html
About the UBC Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory: www.mech.ubc.ca/~caris
About Braintech: www.braintech.com
The Braintech, Inc. logo is available at http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=2174
Statements in this document that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and reflect the current views of management with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. It is important to note that the Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as technical difficulties in developing the products; competition from other suppliers of similar products; pricing that may not be acceptable to potential markets; and many other known and unknown factors. Readers should also refer to the risk disclosures outlined in the Company's 10-KSB and 10-QSB Forms filed from time to time with the SEC.