Entrepreneur’s revolutionary robotics firm shoots for the moon
Today Fort McMurray! Tomorrow the moon!
Nicolas Olmedo, president of Edmonton’s Copperstone Technologies, has big dreams for his robotics company, but not without some justification.
Olmedo and Copperstone have designed a series of autonomous robots that can already go to places and do work that’s extremely difficult for humans to manage.
Copperstone’s amphibious robots specialize in propelling themselves into industrial tailings ponds at mines and oilsands facilities so that measurements can be taken.
There are numerous other applications for the robots as well.
“People look at our (robotic) platforms and see applications we didn’t even know existed,” Olmedo says. “We create platforms you can mount things on and go into difficult terrains. There are applications not only in mining, but in agriculture and environmental monitoring in general. It’s exciting, actually.”
Olmedo, 30, is from a heavy science background in Quito, Ecuador.
His father, a chemist, runs a company that measures consumer reaction to laundry detergent effectiveness. As a boy, Olmedo was always interested in building things, creating numerous models of cars and dinosaurs, meticulously constructing them out of wire, wood and paper.
“I always wanted to build things,” he says. “For me it was more interesting to build them than to end up playing with them.”
He came to Edmonton at age 18 in 2006, knowing no one here but drawn to the city by the strong reputation of both Canada as a nation and of the University of Alberta’s engineering program. He was attracted to the annual robotics competition, where every year teams of students are tasked with building a robot that will complete a specific task.
As a masters and doctoral student under professor Mike Lipsett, Olmedo worked on a number of robot projects.
In 2014, he and two other grad students branched out to form Copperstone. Lipsett joined them later.
Their breakthrough idea was to use screws for propulsion, the robot attached to two screw pontoons, which both rotate and float. It all combines to push the robot ahead through water or oilsands sludge.
The robots collect measurements, which are then used to determine the treatment of the tailings material, testing how quickly a certain chemical process can remove water from the tailings, or how firm the tailings surface is and whether it can support a larger vehicle.
By November 2015, Copperstone had a 300-kilogram prototype built to test if it could navigate over a tailings pond, some of which are 50 metres deep and kilometres long and filled with yogurt — or honey-like sticky sludge.
For the initial test, there was a lot of pessimism about the robot succeeding, Olmedo says.
“I think everybody was expecting for us to get super stuck ... It’s material that everything gets stuck on. This is sticky black ‘honey.’ ”
Tracked or wheeled equipment couldn’t navigate this surface, but maybe the Copperstone robot would be different. But not even Olmedo was certain of success.
“I was driving it, so I was super nervous.”
As soon as the robot dropped into the sludge, it sank deeper than expected. The screw pontoons submerged and struggled to turn. The motor maxed out in torque trying to move the screws.
“It was really scary ... I thought we were in trouble for sure ... Everyone was like, ‘OK, now we have to go get the winch.’ Everyone was losing hope immediately.” But Olmedo was able to rock the robot side to side to wiggle it out of its hole. The robot was then able to move around, make a circuit and take measurements.
“It was great. Everybody was very relieved that we didn’t have to get it out by pulling it.”
The most recent version of the robot has four screw pontoons, not just two, which increases its mobility. It also weighs just 55 kilograms, so it can be more easily transported to job sites by airplane.
With more than 3,500 industrial tailings ponds on earth, Copperstone should have no shortage of work, but Olmedo already has his eyes on a much greater prize: the creation of space robots.
“Our future goal is for sure to do space exploration robots. That’s like the high peak of everybody who is working in robots. It’s the biggest challenge. There’s a lot of interest in mining asteroids. So it’s a whole other level of automation and reliability and challenges in zero gravity and huge radiation. It’s the most complicated situation. It most likely will happen in our lifetime. I think we’re aiming for sure to develop the skills necessary to be able to propose something interesting.”