UNMANNED
VEHICLES From Earth to the stars
THE PROMISE To boldly go where no robot has gone before — thereby automating the world’s dullest, dirtiest and deadliest jobs.
THE PURVEYORS Started in 2009 by four University of Wa- terloo engineering students, Kitchener, Ont.’s Clearpath Robot- ics Inc. has become a global leader in unmanned vehicles. Its expertise is in mechatronics — a combination of mechanical, electronic, computer and systems design engineering — and it has developed technologies to facilitate mine mapping, harbour surveillance and the monitoring of tailings ponds in northern Alberta’s oilpatch. Some 450 km north of Kitchener, Sudbury’s Deltion Innova-
tions Ltd. is creating groundbreaking tools that are literally out of this world. It’s been working with the Canadian Space Agency and NASA to build drills for a mission to the South Pole of the moon that may occur as early as 2018.
1906 AM radio
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THE PROSPECTS Clearpath now has more than 75 employ- ees and works in 30-plus countries with organizations includ- ing the Canadian Space Agency, the US Navy, Intel and Honda. Last July, it sold its thousandth robot. “The idea is, you gradu- ate from school, you settle down, you get married, you buy your first house, you buy your first car and you buy your first robot,” Clearpath cofounder Matt Rendall told the Waterloo Record this past November. In the hopes of securing a trip on NASA’s Resource Prospector Mission, Deltion is perfecting an unmanned vehicle with a drill bit capable of extracting a core in a near vacuum in tempera- tures as low as -180 C. Elements rare on Earth can be plentiful on the moon or on asteroids, which are frequently rich in iron, nickel and cobalt and contain valuable trace elements, such as gold, platinum and rhodium.
1931 Plexiglas
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oven cleaner JUNE/JULY 2015 | CPA MAGAZINE | 35
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