Six New CENGN Living Lab Projects Announced, Valued at $4.5 Million for Canadian Startups

OTTAWA, CANADA, August 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Six Canadian startups and scaleups have been approved to begin technology commercialization projects through the CENGN Living Lab Initiative.
Each project will involve validating a Canadian tech solution in a real end-user environment.
The projects have a combined value of $4.5 million and are receiving $1.7 million in funding from ISED’s SRF program.

August 27, 2026 – Today, CENGN announced its latest wave of Canadian startups and scaleups that will undertake commercialization projects through the CENGN Living Lab Initiative. The six selected companies will validate and demonstrate their solutions at CENGN’s Smart Mobility, Connected Robotics, and 5G Advanced Living Labs.

With a combined value of $4.5 million, these projects are supported by $1.7 million in funding from the Federal Government’s Strategic Response Fund (SRF) and mark the beginning of the CENGN Living Lab Initiative’s goal to help over 100 Canadian startups and scaleups looking to prepare their innovative products and solutions for commercialization and industry adoption.

By offering access to advanced infrastructure, expert support, and real-world testing environments, the CENGN Living Lab Initiative drives technology adoption across key economic sectors. It plays a critical role in boosting Canadian industry competitiveness, fostering new Intellectual Property, and fueling the growth of the country’s most promising technology ventures.


Six Canadian Companies Embark on CENGN Living Lab Projects

The six projects will support each innovative Canadian tech startup and scaleup on their respective commercial journeys:

"Carrying out a CENGN project will enable Avidbots to make design enhancements needed to meet some of the European regulations and help bring our robots to the European Market. Kas is an autonomous floor scrubbing robot built for medium-sized commercial spaces, cleaning reliably day after day. Europe is a significant share of the global commercial cleaning market, and entering it means more facilities can redirect the hours their teams spend scrubbing floors toward higher-value work." Pablo Molina, CTO, VP of Product & Co-Founder, Avidbots.

Avidbots: Avidbots builds autonomous floor scrubbing robots for commercial spaces. Kas covers medium-sized facilities and Neo covers large ones. Both run Avidbots' autonomy software, allowing them to clean consistently without operator intervention. Through this CENGN project, Avidbots is making enhancements to its Kas robot design to pass EU regulations, opening the door to the European market for Kas.

Project Lab: Connected Robotics Living Lab – Powered by the University of Waterloo’s RoboHub and Rogers

"Carrying out a CENGN project will enable JPlug to validate and scale our technology as we expand the ways businesses can offer EV charging to their customers. JPlug provides a hardware-agnostic software platform that makes it simple for businesses and technology platforms to integrate, manage, and monetize EV charging without being locked into a specific charging network or hardware provider. Ultimately, we want EV charging to become a seamless part of the customer experience rather than another fragmented app or network drivers have to navigate." Jorge Pantoja, CEO & Co-Founder, JPlug.

JPlug: JPlug makes EV charging more seamless by enabling businesses and technology platforms to integrate charging directly into their existing customer experiences. Its hardware-agnostic software works across a range of charging stations, allowing businesses to launch, manage, and scale branded EV charging experiences without vendor lock-in or the complexity of operating a traditional charging network.

Project Lab: 5G Advanced Performance Living Lab – Powered by Ericsson

"Carrying out a CENGN project will enable our organization to advance agroTRAX™ from a proven prototype to a commercially ready solution through rigorous field validation and real-world deployment. Our autonomous robotics platform combines intelligent navigation, active suspension, and a configurable architecture to automate labor-intensive tasks in greenhouse and specialty crop production. By validating performance directly with growers, we will deliver a practical and scalable automation solution that helps address labor shortages, improve productivity, and accelerate the adoption of agricultural robotics " Konrad Konnerth, CEO, Konnexio.

Konnexio: agroTRAX™ is a modular autonomous robotics platform designed to support a wide range of agricultural applications in specialty crop production. This project will validate a UV-C treatment module for table-top strawberries grown in tunnel environments, demonstrating how the platform can help growers reduce disease pressure, decrease labor requirements, and improve operational efficiency through automation.

Project Lab: Connected Robotics Living Lab – Powered by the University of Waterloo’s RoboHub and Rogers

"Carrying out this CENGN project will let us validate our Teleoperation Assurance Module on CENGN's Private 5G testbed to support remote operation of overhead cranes, mining equipment, and other heavy machinery. As industrial companies teleoperate critical equipment over Private 5G, connectivity quality becomes a safety issue, not just a performance one, and our solution continuously monitors, predicts, and diagnoses network health to give operators real-time visibility and eliminate unplanned downtime. This project will let us characterize the minimum and optimal quality-of-service levels needed for different types of teleoperation activities." Benoît Gendron, CEO, Latence Technologies.

Latence Technologies: LatenceTech provides an AI-powered network analytics solution focused on connectivity performance and reliability. As industrial and consumer innovations — GenAI, autonomous vehicles, robotics, teleoperation, drones — increasingly depend on seamless, ultra-low-latency connectivity, even small variations in latency or throughput can make these services unusable or unsafe. Our 100% software-based platform continuously monitors connectivity quality in real time across any network type (5G, Wi-Fi, Fiber, Satellite), using AI to diagnose issues, predict degradations before they occur, and recommend optimizations. It validates end-to-end network readiness, forecasts latency spikes before they impact operations, and establishes a clear performance blueprint (SLA/SLO) for your infrastructure across multiple networks.

Project Lab: Smart Mobility and Agriculture Living Lab – Powered by Area X.O

"Carrying out a CENGN project will let us validate our soil moisture sensor network and irrigation decision support system in a real, connected farming environment rather than a controlled test plot. Our platform combines multi-depth soil sensing with digital soil mapping to give growers precise, site-specific irrigation recommendations delivered right to their phone. This project will help us quantify exactly how much water growers can save by moving away from conventional irrigation scheduling." Asim Biswas, Founder & President, SoilTeck Corp.

Soil Teck: Using innovative soil and water management technologies, SoilTeck helps farmers improve soil health, optimize irrigation, and make more informed decisions about crop production. Its solutions provide actionable insights into soil conditions and water availability, helping growers improve resource efficiency, reduce costs, and support more sustainable agricultural practices.

Project Lab: Smart Mobility and Agriculture Living Lab – Powered by Area X.O

"Working with CENGN gives Zighra the opportunity to prove GenesysInsights in a range of real-world operating conditions, not just in a controlled lab. By combining multi-sensor fusion, spectrum sensing and explainable AI - our system can detect GNSS jamming and other RF anomalies in real time. This enables operators with the situational awareness needed to keep autonomous systems operating safely. The results will help us refine the technology, reduce adoption risk and create a clearer path to deployment across defence, transportation, maritime and critical infrastructure.” Deepak Dutt, CEO, Zighra

Zighra: GenesysInsights is Zighra’s AI-powered sensor intelligence platform for autonomous and uncrewed systems operating in complex or communications-degraded environments. It analyzes GNSS, radio-frequency and multi-sensor data at the edge to detect and locate jamming, spoofing and other emissions - enabling operator autonomy at the edge.

Project Lab: Smart Mobility and Agriculture Living Lab – Powered by Area X.O and Connected Robotics Living Lab – Powered by the University of Waterloo’s RoboHub and Rogers


Federal Government’s ISED Invests $45 Million

Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED)’s $45 million investment in CENGN aims to expedite the technology transformation of Canadian industry while directly supporting Canadian innovators through Innovation and Adoption Projects. Each Innovation Project includes up to $250K in co-investment funding to the startup or scaleup, a number which increases up to $500K for Adoption Projects.

This funding is expected to provide a major return on investment, including

- A significant boost in GDP growth
- The creation and safeguarding of critical tech jobs in Canada
- The launch of innovative Canadian products in the global market
- The generation of disruptive and impactful Canadian IP patents
- Sales growth and substantial follow-on investment for participating Canadian startups and scaleups
- Acceleration of Technology Readiness Levels for participating Canadian companies
- The entry of skilled professionals into critical digital technology roles nationwide

“Advancing Canada’s leadership in 5G and smart technologies is crucial to our economic growth and global competitiveness. By supporting collaborative partnerships like the CENGN Living Lab Initiative, our government is giving innovators and entrepreneurs the tools they need to accelerate the development of breakthrough solutions in robotics, automation, and applied AI. These partnerships help build a stronger, more connected ecosystem where Canadian ideas can be tested, refined, and taken to markets worldwide.” The Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions

“Canada has the talent and ingenuity to build world-class technologies. Through initiatives like CENGN's Living Labs, Canadian companies can test, validate and scale innovative solutions in real-world environments. This support helps turn Canadian ideas into commercial success, strengthening our economy and advancing the adoption of new technologies across the country." The Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario

“The demand from Canadian startups and scaleups for access to CENGN Living Lab services has grown impressively with the launch of each Living Lab across the country. This round of projects exemplifies the value of our initiative to support the robust and vibrant innovation ecosystem in Canada, and support the development of homegrown Canadian IP that will enable our country to lead the way in next-generation technology solutions.” Sandra Cutrona, President & CEO at CENGN.


Resources:

CENGN Living Lab Initiative – https://www.cengn.ca/strategic-innovation-fund/
ISED SRF Program – https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/programs-and-initiatives/strategic-response-fund


Avidbots - https://avidbots.com/
JPlug - https://jplug.io/
Konnexio - https://konnexio.com/
Latence Technologies - https://www.latencetech.com/
Soil Teck - https://soilteck.ca/
Zighra - https://zighra.com/


Media Contact:

Rick Penwarden
Communications Director
CENGN -Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks
613-963-1203
Rick.Penwarden@cengn.ca



CENGN – Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks

CENGN, Canada's Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives innovation and adoption of applied AI, IoT, and advanced networking technologies through its Living Lab Initiative, technical expertise, and partner ecosystem. Through our services, we enable the digital transformation and competitiveness of the Canadian industry and the commercial growth of Canadian digital technology solutions. CENGN provides access to real end-user environments and the end-to-end testing services and expertise that accelerate validation, demonstration, commercialization, and adoption of digital innovation solutions across Canada and the globe.

Our unique expertise and positioning as a neutral third party in an ecosystem of technology, innovation, government, and academic partners, paired with a long track record of overperforming on program mandates, have made CENGN a trusted leader in delivering Government initiatives that support network technology innovation.

For more information on the CENGN Living Labs or for general inquiries on CENGN, please contact services@cengn.ca.

Rick Penwarden - Communications Director
CENGN
+1 613-963-1203
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