This snowbot is coming to help plow the Rideau Canal skateway

Professors and graduate students from Carleton University plan to unleash a robot onto the Rideau Canal Skateway later this month so it can remove snow when the ice is too thin and dangerous for humans and heavier equipment to tread on.

The tool is called a snowbot and it's one way researchers are gathering skateway data and to avoid last year's bummer of a non-skating season.

The canal, one of the city's top tourist draws, famously couldn't open to skaters last winter because weather and ice conditions just weren't right.

One thing that would help is to remove snow as early as possible in the season because snow insulates ice.

But how to do so safely? Enter the snowbot.

'[It's] a little bit awkward to carry,' Kenny said. (Submitted by Carleton University)

It weighs about 50 kilograms, sans battery — about the same size as a hand-push lawnmower but lighter — and can operate semi-autonomously, said Shawn Kenny, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carleton University, when speaking with CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning earlier this week.

"The idea is to ... understand and have data to where we can actually make decisions about how we want to move forward," Kenny said. "Can this be scaled [up] to be used across the canal or only be used in certain regions or areas?"

The machine is made with the help of 3D printing and has an aluminum box frame to enclose its electronics.

And, no, it hasn't been named yet, but the team is working on it.

"We've actually had a competition," Kenny said. "We're still trying to figure out what we should do."