About 13 years ago, four friends and mechatronics engineering students at the University of Waterloo – Matt Rendall (BASc ’08, MBET ’09), Ryan Gariepy (BASc ’09, MASc ’12), Pat Martinson (BASc ’09) and Bryan Webb (BASc ’09) – started building robots.
It was an interest that grew from their involvement in the UW Robotics Team and then carried on into their final-year engineering project, which became an idea for a company.
From those humble beginnings, Clearpath Robotics became a multi-million-dollar global enterprise that now employs 320 people, mostly in Waterloo Region, but also elsewhere in the world. It has customers in at least 50 countries.
One of its projects involves working with Brampton-based MDA, the devevoper of the Canadarm, on software that will drive a robotic lunar rover when it is sent to the moon by the Canadian Space Agency in 2026.
Go to From building robots in the basement to putting algorithms on the moon for the full story.