Manual welding is a highly demanding task which requires extensive expertise for certain applications such as pipe welding. To facilitate the welding process, increase productivity, and decrease welders required level of skill, Novarc Technologies has designed and manufactured a collaborative Spool Welding Robot (SWR) equipped with a laser assistant weld path tracking. Our proposed research takes into account the fact that currently, welders rely on their eyes and the limited view of the weld pool through the helmet to control the welding process.
Nowadays, massive timber floor/roof systems are designed by a simplified approach that treats the floor/roof and the supporting beams separately, thus ignoring the composite action between these two elements. Including the composite action in the calculations has the potential to increase the stiffness of the systems and to make their design more competitive and cost-effective. The key to achieve the composite action is to have a very stiff connection between the members.
Applications of wireless security approaches are increasing in number by the day. One such application is detection and interception of rogue aerial intruders. Drone technology is growing at a tremendous pace and is expected to be a $12 billion industry by 2021. Coupled with this growth comes the increasing threat of rogue intruders disrupting day-to-day activities and sensitive infrastructure. Towards this end, rogue drone detection has become an important industry by itself and focuses on securing the airspace around us.
Bull trout in the upper Fraser watershed (UFW) of British Columbia are important top predators and serve as the basis of a recreational fishery. Anglers in the region have asked government to consider changing current fishing regulations for bull trout from catch-and-release to regulations that allow them to take a portion of their catch home. Allowing for this regulatory change would increase the types of fishing opportunities in the area but could harm bull trout populations.
Vaccines are a vital part of societys arsenal for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Since they are challenging to produce, vaccine manufacturing is largely concentrated in select locations in the developed world. This situation presents steep obstacles to transporting them to people in the developing world who need them the most. Moreover, transportation and storage comprises roughly half the cost of a vaccine dose.
The Aboriginal housing situation in Canada is in crisis with a lack of culturally and environmentally appropriate housing. To address this need, this Mitacs Elevate project involves a collaboration between the Heiltsuk Nation (in Bella Bella, BC), the University of British Columbia, and FPInnovations. Through this project, a Participatory Approach towards Holistic Solutions (PATHS) framework was created and applied to help assess pathways with which the Heiltsuk Nation may effectively develop and implement community-led housing solutions.
The sequence of costly wildfires that burned at multiple locations in British Columbia and Alberta during fire seasons in 2003, 2015, 2016 and 2017 remind people that fires play an important part in forests of southwestern Canada. However, people are also increasingly recognizing the role of fire in providing ecological renewal and diversification. As a testament to this growth in understanding, forestry companies are embracing practices which include emulating historical fire regimes that exhibit a wide range of spatial and temporal characteristics such as fire shape and severity.
In this joint collaboration with Scotiabank we hope to solve a commonly faced problem by large financial institutions. It is to detect errors in financial datasets. This could be due to typing errors made by a human or a computer glitch that causes an incorrect value to be stored. To identify these errors, we plan to build an error detection system. It will model how financial variables change in relation to other variables. This will help us identify groups of variables that move, through time, in a similar manner. With this knowledge we will then be able to spot errors in the data.
Metro Vancouver is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. While responses to the crisis have tended to focus on our most at-risk populations, the reality is that even with a stable income, the high cost of housing is one of the primary reasons people and families of all ages are leaving the region. This research project will explore non-profit development of affordable workforce rental housing for households earning between $20,000-$100,000 per year.
EMBERS Eastside Works (EW) is a new low barrier employment centre in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. EW helps people in the Downtown Eastside make connections to the world of work, earn income, and improve their livelihoods. The proposed research will work with EW to develop a database and information system that fits their needs, while informing a larger UBC research study on individuals economic activity and how it affects their health and well-being in the downtown eastside.
