Innovative Projects Realized

Building Systems Operational Dashboard and Analysis

Mircom is a Canadian Company that operates as a global player the building solutions sector and is the largest independent fire alarm and control system manufacturer in North America, with product lines spanning Fire Alarm and Emergency Audio, Communications, and Security and brands include Mircom™ Secutron™, and U.E.C.™ United Export Corporation. This project will boost Mircom’s competitiveness in global markets by using data effectively to improve operating margins. Using Mircom’s large repository of sales, manufacturing, supply chain, and inventory data, Mircom is collaborating with Seneca’s School of Software Design and Data Science to create advanced systems and tools to support manufacturing and supply chain operations. Objectives of this research are the development of a data lake architecture, which provides a consistent, reliable data repository for real time analytics, and the creation and training of machine learning and artificial intelligence-based tools to rapidly provide optimized pricing information and supply chain transparency.

Engineering a new biosynthetic pathway for the production of minor cannabinoids

As one of the first countries to legalize cannabis, Canada is at the forefront of the cannabis research and technology. While there are a number of medical applications for Cannabis that have been used for a number of years, these treatments require patients to either smoke dried cannabis, or use cannabis extracts that can include a number of plant impurities and are mixtures of various cannabinoids compounds. Over 120 minor cannabinoids are produced by the cannabis plant, C. sativa. In order to advance the study of medical applications of cannabinoids, a robust method to produce pure, high quality minor cannabinoids is needed. The proposed research will work to develop a novel method for producing cannabinoids using biological synthesis in E. coli. The Ward Lab will engineer a number of strains optimized to produce a single minor cannabinoids at a time, and as E. coli does not normally produced these compounds, we will be able to recovery it at a high purity for pharmaceutical applications. This project is expected to establish a number of cannabinoids producing strains, perform strain optimization, and to provide information needed to enable the commercialization of the developed process.

Design Development for Prefabricated Building Components using Hemp and Lime

The intern will work with a multi-disciplinary research team from architecture, civil engineering, mechanical
engineering, biology, business development and materials research in the design development phase of a project
to create a bio-mass panel prototype from cellulose (hemp biomass). As the most abundant organic polymer on
the planet, cellulose is currently emerging as a sustainable material alternative to plastics and other non-recyclable
materials. Using sustainable feedstocks (industrial hemp and old corrugated cardboard) and water, this research
project uses a matrix of nano/micro fibrillated cellulose to create components for a prefabricated building system:
flat stock and aerogels combined as a structural insulated panel (SIP). SIPS are currently used in the construction
industry using combinations of spray foams, toxic adhesives and non-recyclable materials. Currently, the NMFC
has been used to successfully create extremely durable and resilient sheets, tubes and aerogel, so this project is
aimed at scaling up this material for use in building construction. This project will engage the intern with academic
advisors, industry and business leaders in the early stages of this interdisciplinary project focussing at providing
a healthy and sustainable alternative for the Canadian construction industry.

A Case Study of Keegan Resources’ Sustainability Efforts in Ghana- Establishing a Social Partnership Building Framework for Junior Mining Companies in Canada

By studying Keegan Resource’s social partnership building process in Ghana, this project aims to
develop a community development framework for junior mining companies in Canada. By analyzing
results obtained from semi-structured interviews and observation from partnership meetings, the
framework will identify key success factors that can aid partnership development with the aim of
maximizing the benefit for the local communities while taking the partnership organizations’ financial
and human resources into account. This framework would not only help the partner organization to
better understand its own practice, identify opportunities for improvement and increase its reputational
capital but also inspire and provide guidance for other junior and mid-tier mining companies that wish
to develop a clear set of focused community building strategies, thus raising the standard of the
industry as a whole.

Semantic versioning of model changes in decision support systems

Nowadays, almost any company in Canada in operation heavily relies on software solutions to improve their productivity. However, they are often facing the problem of having too many options to choose from for the software best fit for their needs. Decision support systems (DSS) help enterprises to take significant business decisions, such as finding the best software solution. Our industrial partner has developed a DSP that incrementally builds a decision model with customers preferences, choices, and ratings. However, as different users are making changes to the model, all these modifications must be tracked for comparison and merging purposes. This project aims to develop the differencing and merge conflict management specifically for DSS. We employ on advanced software engineering techniques to take into account the semantical changes that may occur and report them in a meaningful way to the user.

Autonomous Motion Planning for a Safe and Efficient Last Mile Delivery Robot

In recent years, the North American population has become increasingly dependent on food and consumer product delivery. As a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic there have been surges in delivery demand. There are several active driving-based delivery methods, such as Uber Eats, however drivers are required to navigate through traffic, park, turn off their vehicle, exit and walk to the customer doorstep to drop products off. This cumbersome and inefficient final step of the service is known as the last-mile delivery problem. The last mile is time consuming, expensive, and environmentally unfriendly, especially in densely populated cities. Tinymile.ai is a company developing tele-operated wheeled mobile robots (WMR) to address the last-mile delivery problem and perform contact-less delivery amidst the current pandemic. These robots are semi-autonomous as operators control their movements remotely. The research objective is to develop an optimal, controlled motion planning approach to enhance functionality and controllability of WMRs when performing deliveries.

Towards a circular end-to-end process for fully 3D printed footwear – assessment of additive manufacturing processes, material selection and mechanical characterization

The fashion industry has recently shifted toward better environmental practices but focus has been on apparel because shoes are complex products. ARSHAE, located in Montréal, proposes an end-to-end solution that accounts for the entire life cycle of shoes by building a closed loop system that enables zero waste. ARSHAE focuses on using ecological materials in hyper-localized mini factories powered by 3D printing.
3D printing is a highly interesting and disruptive solution presenting unlimited potential for the footwear industry. Moreover, it has a potential to drastically reduce the time to market and deliver personalized shoes on demand considering customer preferences and needs to unpreceded level. However, developments are still in its infancy and a fully 3D printed shoe is challenging to achieve. Sofar, only few components of a shoe are 3D printed by some by large global footwear companies.
Building on solid fashion design expertise and a comprehensive and solid review already performed by ARSHAE, the company needs support on specific engineering expertise. This project aims to address this problematic by determining and optimizing the choice of materials, the 3D printing process, and the design of the parts to be printed enabling fully 3D printing footwear at economical viable costs.

Measuring up? Assessing approaches used to measure the effectiveness of protected areas at conserving biodiversity

The world is currently facing a biodiversity crisis driven by the loss and degradation of habitat resulting from the conversion of natural areas to agricultural land and urban development. To combat this biodiversity crisis, the government committed to Convention of Biological Diversity and national targets of protecting at least 17% of terrestrial land through network of protected areas. The goal of protected areas is to ensure that biodiversity is conserved, however, whether protected areas are effective at conserving biodiversity is debated. Part of this discrepancy may result from how effectiveness is defined and measured, and if the approaches used are appropriate. Working with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, our goal is to conduct an inventory of whether steps are being taken to monitor or measure the effectiveness of protected areas, preform a comprehensive review of the monitoring or measuring approaches used, and perform a critical assessment of these approaches to determine best practices.

Development of robust and innovative designs for pet products aiming at positively affecting pet behavior

In most cases, the overwhelming reason behind pet abandonment is because of behavioral problems. Often, these behavioral problems are common issues that could be corrected if owners were to better understand their pets. Beonebreed, a young Canadian company active in the pet products’ market, proposes the development of two products aiming at the resolution of this problem. The desensitizer will be a unique product on the market, an interconnected product that will partly imitate the methods of a pet behaviorist by rewarding the animal when a positive event happens. This device will be connected with an intelligent toy, an interesting and long-lasting device that aims at diverting the pet’s attention from reprehensible behavior. This project will provide the young company Beonebreed with innovative mechanical designs for the specific application of their new product.

Integrity and Analytics of Energy Market Data

ReWatt Power facilitates transactions of green energy derivatives/green attributes such as Alberta Carbon Offsets. The company uses a blockchain technology to manage all transactions on their platform. This way, all parties have access to the transaction history in a database they own, and the transactions are immutable. The first objective of this project is to ensure that source energy measurements are accurate before the resulting green attributes are permanently recorded. The second objective is to support customers in making decision on which energy derivative/green attribute should be used to maximize the monetary value of available measurements. This is a challenging prediction task that depends on attribute type, jurisdiction/geographical area, and time.

3D Reconstruction of sub-sea assets using Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)

In this project our goal is to facilitate the 3D reconstruction of assets that are found in the ocean bed for the purpose of monitoring the state of the asset, especially to assess whether there is corrosion or cracks in the equipment. Through the use of high-quality subsea imaging, we can obtain images of assets that can be visually inspected for corrosion and cracks. A 3D reconstruction of the asset would be a valuable tool to communicate the location of the detected regions of interest, as the 3D model can be tagged with positional markers that indicate the exact location of the damaged regions. In this project, we will produce a prototype of such a 3D reconstruction system. The partner organization will benefit from the system in that it will allow them to accelerate the discovery and documentation of the places where the assets exhibit corrosion or cracks.

Business Development Intern

Compass offers a wide range of decision support services, analysis, and innovative tools to help people, government, and industry make informed decisions. We help groups balance technical, social, environmental, and financial objectives to make sure things that matter most are evaluated correctly and fairly. Much of our work relies on face-to-face interaction which has been greatly impacted by COVID-19. We have transitioned much of our business to be conducted online which has proved challenging, but ultimately effective. Despite the changing business environment, our team has remained focused on developing software that assists our clients with significant decisions that will impact the future of their business and their stakeholders.

The addition of an intern will help to offer a new perspective when developing our business plan for the commercialization of our software. With recent teachings and knowledge of the technology market and industry players, the intern will help
our team to effectively research, develop, and implement our business plan in the coming months. The work completed will help us define our strategy and roadmap forward into commercializing software. Our long-term strategic goal is to open new revenue stream that can will help grow and modernize our business