Meet Canada's robot masters

Robots are an essential companion to mankind in space, and many of the modern-day masters of these robots are to be found in Montreal, home to the Canadian Space Agency.

Euronews Space has unique access to the team, among them operations engineer Mathieu Caron, who can steer the Canadarm 2 directly from his control room, or instruct astronauts piloting it in space.

When we meet him, he is preparing for a tricky manoeuvre.

“In a few months we’ll be using the Canadarm2 to catch a Dragon resupply capsule,” Caron tells Euronews. “That capsule cannot dock on its own with the space station. It matches the heading and speed of the space station, comes within ten metres of the station, and the astronauts inside will use the Canadarm 2 to grab on to the Space X capsule.”

That process has to be ultra-precise, but also speedy: “They have to make sure that they grab on quickly, otherwise a small perturbation will cause the vehicle to diverge quite rapidly.”

Canada – which has partnered with the European Space Agency since the 1970s – launched its first Canadarm space robot on the American shuttle back in 1981.

“It was a request from NASA to build an arm for the space shuttle, which was then designed and built in Canada,” says Stéphane Desjardins, Acting Director of Space Exploration. “Then, from then on, each Shuttle had its space arm, which was used for most of their missions. Afterwards, when it was time to design the ISS, Canada proposed making a new arm, the Canadarm 2, for the space station.”

That arm, and Dextre, the mobile servicing robot, are a lasting source of satisfaction for the country, which even features the Canadarm and its Dextre ‘robotic hand’ on its five dollar notes. As Canada’s best-known astronaut Chris Hadfield says: “Canada built the Canadarm 2, and Canadarm 2 built this space station. Everybody should be proud of that.”

The CSA works with many international partners, and each and every ESA and NASA astronaut has to train on Canadian space robotics.

It begins with a scale model of the ISS and a lesson from engineer Kumudu Jinadasa, who uses the model to help the astronauts orientate themselves around the orbiting space laboratory.

She asks them to use the mini Canadarm model and “configure each of the joints – roll, yaw, pitch – then they’ll put it in the initial configuration for their operation, and they’ll actually put it on the station, and go through the motion of the arm to the operation that they’re going to do.”

“It’s important because we don’t want any collisions in space. Either self-collisions between the robotics themselves, self-collisions between the joints, collisions with EVA, that would be catastrophic, or even collisions with the station, which could cause a rapid de-press and then we’d be in a really high emergency situation,” says Jinadasa.

While the daily operations of Canadarm continue, CSA engineers are also working on robot rovers for the Moon and Mars.

Director of Space Science and