St. Clair College bought a humanoid this past summer and held a naming contest this fall.
After sifting through about 200 submissions, Protection, Security & Investigation student Mohammed Al-Khaeteb’s entry was selected.
St. Clair’s Humanoid is now known as Clairion.
The Unitree R1 Humanoid model was purchased by St. Clair College’s Research and Innovation department with a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Clairion has been on several visits to local manufacturing facilities, with the goal of understanding how humanoid technology could enhance existing operations, improve efficiencies, and potentially transform certain processes.
Al-Khaeteb says he wanted the school’s name to be included in the robot’s name.
“When I got the call I was just in shock. When I saw the poster, I noticed that they wanted kind of like a mix of St. Clair with robotics. I wanted to add St. Clair in the name.”
Since landing on campus in July, Clairion has been programmed to be able to speak and has a knowledge base ranking it at a Level 3 ability. The college feels it can get Clairion to a Level 5 by February.
John Ulakovich, professor and coordinator of the data analytics program, says the college has visited industry partners to see how students can work with the humanoid with their shops in mind.
“We can see that there’s going to be a great potential here to have some of our programs working with industry partners more, especially having Clairion here on campus, it gives the students that experiential learning, that bridge. So they’re actually working with a real humanoid that potentially they can also work with industry partners later and graduate and have those types of jobs.”
John Lopez, program manager from the research and innovation department, says St. Clair College is now looking into the possibility of getting another humanoid with different features.
“Large ones with hands. So this ones doesn’t have hands yet. We’re we’re looking to purchase hands. So that’ll create even more opportunity where you can pick and place and grab, so new functions that we can teach the robot.”