Pilot Pulse

What is Pilot Pulse?

Pilot Pulse is a Gemini-powered platform designed to help Canadian sustainability innovations move from research to real-world deployment.

Many Canadian cleantech companies have promising technologies and strong research, but commercialization can stall because companies need financing, investors need evidence, and customers need understandable information before supporting a pilot.

We narrowed this challenge to municipal water and wastewater innovation, where technologies can involve significant costs, technical complexity, public health considerations, environmental impact, and the need for real-world testing.

The Problem

Our research identified connected barriers in the Canadian cleantech commercialization ecosystem. According to Natural Resources Canada's Cleantech Industry Survey, among cleantech companies at the commercialization stage:

65% reported insufficient funding for scale-up
41% reported difficulty finding early customers
33% reported difficulty finding investors

These problems reinforce one another. Companies need financing to demonstrate their technology, investors want evidence before financing a pilot, and customers need confidence before supporting a project.

Our Solution

Pilot Pulse creates a continuous process:

Company Evidence → Gemini → Customer Questions & Feedback → Government Refinement → Investor Evidence

Companies upload approved project evidence such as research papers, proposals, laboratory results, and safety reports. Gemini transforms this information into structured, understandable project information.

Customers can then ask project-specific questions and receive answers grounded in the provided evidence. Gemini is instructed not to invent safety, regulatory, cost, or performance claims. When the available evidence does not contain an answer, it communicates that uncertainty.

After answering questions, Pilot Pulse collects customer feedback about understanding, confidence, support, concerns, and suggestions.

Governments and project teams can use aggregated feedback to identify recurring concerns and improve the pilot. For example, repeated questions about winter performance could lead to additional testing or clearer public documentation.

Finally, companies can provide investors with aggregated and anonymized customer-feedback information, including engagement, support, answer satisfaction, evidence strength, common concerns, and unresolved risks.

Pilot Pulse does not tell investors whether to invest. It provides additional evidence to support their due diligence.

Gemini Integration

Gemini is at the center of the platform.

We use the official Gemini SDK with structured Gemini output, Zod validation, and Next.js API routes to create consistent project information rather than relying on uncontrolled AI responses.

Gemini helps:

Convert technical documents into structured project information.
Answer customer questions using supplied project evidence.
Communicate uncertainty when information is unavailable.
Analyze customer feedback and identify recurring themes.
Help connect customer understanding with government and investor decision-making.

The Impact

Pilot Pulse connects four stakeholders through one feedback loop:

Companies turn technical research into understandable project information.

Customers get immediate answers and a simple way to communicate concerns.

Governments gain insight into public concerns and opportunities to improve pilots.

Investors receive additional customer-confidence evidence to support due diligence.

Our prototype demonstrates how aggregated customer feedback could be presented to investors. The feedback themes and investor brief shown in the prototype are demonstration content and are not real customer results.