Quanser
About
About Quanser
Quanser grew out of academic control-systems work led by founder Jacob Apkarian and has spent more than three decades building laboratory equipment for engineering education and research. The Canadian company designs its systems around repeatability, open control access and integration with common technical-computing environments, allowing institutions to move from theory to experiments without assembling every subsystem independently.
Its robotics portfolio includes QArm manipulators, QBot mobile platforms, autonomous-vehicle and drone laboratories, haptics systems and integrated Physical AI environments. Hardware is paired with real-time software, digital twins and teaching or research content, with support for tools including ROS, Python, MATLAB/Simulink and NVIDIA simulation workflows. Quanser is therefore an enabling research-infrastructure company rather than an operational robot fleet provider.
Supply
Supply chain relationships
- RealSense
Inbound - Robot Vision - Quanser integrates a RealSense D405 camera in QArm Research
Source - OmniVision Technologies
Inbound - Robot Vision - Quanser specifies an OmniVision OV9281 high-frame-rate grayscale camera in QDrone 2
Source - RealSense
Inbound - Perception - Quanser's QBot Platform uses an Intel RealSense D435 RGB-D front camera from the spun-out RealSense business
Source - RealSense
Inbound - Perception - Quanser specifies an Intel D435 RGB-D camera in the current QCar 2. The canonical supplier endpoint is the spun-out RealSense business
Source - NVIDIA
Inbound - Compute & Control - Quanser specifies an onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano computer for the current QBot Platform
Source - RealSense
Inbound - Robot Vision - Quanser specifies a RealSense D415 RGB-D camera in the QArm-based Telepresence System
Source - NVIDIA
Inbound - Compute & Control - Quanser specifies NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX as the onboard computer in the current QCar 2
Source - ATI Industrial Automation
Inbound - Sensing - ATI Industrial Automation supplies Gamma force-torque sensor for haptic teleoperation system to Quanser
Source - RealSense
Inbound - Robot Vision - Quanser specifies a RealSense D435 depth camera in QDrone 2
Source - NVIDIA
Inbound - Robotics Compute - Quanser integrates an NVIDIA AGX Orin computer as the QBrain compute node in QArm Research
Source - Sony
Inbound - Robot Vision - Quanser specifies three Sony IMX219 RGB CSI cameras for side and rear views on QDrone 2
Source - NVIDIA
Inbound - Compute & Control - Quanser QDrone 2 integrates an NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module for onboard compute
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Team
- Paul Gilbert - Chief Executive Officer - Current chief executive
- Jacob Apkarian - Founder and Chief Technology Officer - Founder and technology leadership
- Paul Karam - Chief Robotics Officer and Chief Operating Officer - Robotics and operating leadership
Timeline
Events
- 2025-05-14 - Partnership - Purdue launches Quanser Autonomy Lab
The first initiative integrates Quanser digital-twin simulation infrastructure into Purdue professional master’s programmes in autonomy, IoT and robotics. The lab links physical experimentation with virtual environments for connected and autonomous-systems teaching. Purdue positioned the facility as part of its effort to expand hands-on engineering capacity in autonomy and robotics.
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