Innovative Projects Realized

Manual Wheelchair Simulation with iDAPT’s CEAL Simulator

The proposed MITACS project is intended to be a vital component of a manual wheelchair simulation project at Toronto Rehab’s CEAL Laboratory, which will re-create the experience of navigating the built environment with a wheelchair. Specifically, the internship will focus on the design and fabrication of a novel wheelchair interface that provides a person with force-feedback at the wheelchair’s hand-rims (for example, they will feel increased resistance when trying to navigate an uphill slope in a virtual environment). The interface will also generate real-time outputs of the user’s hand and torso positions, input torques, and centre-of-gravity position, which will then be used to continuously update the wheelchair’s position in a virtual environment that is projected on a screen in front of the user. The project will also require detailed accessibility and safety considerations, and entail a rigorous testing and evaluation phase to ensure that all functional requirements are met. Upon completion of the research undertaken, it is anticipated that CEAL researchers will gain the ability to perform studies pertinent to manual wheelchair users, and thus enhance their safety and mobility in challenging environments.

Surgical Scheduling and Capacity Planning

The purpose of this project is to develop a mathematical model that will effectively answer scheduling and capacity planning challenges for meeting wait time targets for surgeries at Ottawa Hospital. We look to incorporate both operating room time and bed utilization in a sequential decision model of the surgical scheduling process from ‘decision to treat’ date through to discharge from the hospital. The presence of significant uncertainty both in demand and in service times makes this a challenging problem; one that defies an easy solution. The aim is to provide the hospital with both a scheduling policy and a capacity plan that will maintain wait times within the government mandated wait time targets. 

A multi-center prospective, Randomized study To determine the effects of Exercise Managed Intervention Study (ARTEMIS)

Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of risk factors that increases the risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Exercise improves these risk factors, but it is difficult to get people to engage in lifestyle changes. We will test the effectiveness of prescribed exercise to improve fitness and cardiovascular risk factors in a rural population. We will look at whether remote self-monitoring technology has any added benefit. To examine this, half of the participants will receive a technology kit with a Blackberry smartphone equipped with Healthanywhere software, a Bluetooth enabled glucometer and blood pressure monitor and a pedometer. This group will actively monitor their own blood sugars, blood pressure and steps walked per day over the course of the study (1 year). The control group will keep a paper log of their exercise. Ultimately we would like to see whether there are any differences in the change in cardiovascular risk factors between the two groups.

Novel MRI Technical Developments for Noninvasive Measurements of Arterial Stiffness

Numerous evidences have shown cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, obesity or physical inactivity, etc, to be related to heart disease. However, some risk factors remain unclear because of technical challenges from current diagnostic tools. Hardening of the arteries, one of the potential risk factors, has been regarded as the primary indicator of hypertension, atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease.  Unfortunately, there is no one single noninvasive diagnostic method for arterial compliance assessment available in the clinical settings. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a rapidly developing imaging modality that shows high levels of accuracy and reproducibility in evaluating of various heart disorders and blood flow abnormalities. However, the acquisition speed of MRI is not capable to accurately measure hardening of the arteries on patents. This project is designed to develop rapid MRI techniques to accelerate acquisition speed to measure stiffness of the arteries. The object of this project is to provide new noninvasive diagnostic tools to better characterize patients with arteriosclerosis and heart conditions, further improve the safety, accuracy and efficacy of current diagnostic procedures. Furthermore, numerous cardiovascular patients and ongoing clinical researches will be benefited from the achievements of this proposed project.

Numerical investigations of Geophysical Data

Optimal Design of Interface Geometry of Pocelain-Fused-to-Metal (PFM) Dental Crown – an Experimental Study

In conventional crown structure, the crowns are bonded to the bottom layer with a cement layer. The major clinical failure mode is the subsurface radial crack at the interface between the crown and cement. This failure is caused largely by the tensile stress concentration/singularity in the dental ceramic at that interface. A sharp change in the structure geometry or/and mismatch in material properties at interfacial boundary is the source for such stress concentration/singularity. In a previous MITACS internship project, optimal design of interface geometry involved in the PFM dental crown has been suggested based on results obtained from analytical and finite element numerical methods. In the current project, experimental study will be carried out to verify or modify the conclusions obtained from the theoretical studies. Successful completion of the proposed research will bring more reliable design for the man-made tooth structures including both selecting matching materials and the improvement on the interface geometries in the man-made teeth. The partner which is a renowned organization for dental restoration in Alberta will get benefits from this research in improving the current technology and making more reliable and longer life man-made teeth for patients. The contributions from the research will also be beneficial to Canadian dentistry science and relevant industries.

Community Council Growing Prosperity Project

With poverty a reality in Victoria and the Capital Regional District we are motivated to create an in‐depth research project which identifies the issues at hand, and focuses on solutions by taking into account global and national issues, structural issues, and initiatives that have been successful in the past. The Victoria Consortium was formed for the purpose of purchasing 2006 Census Urban Poverty Project custom tabulations as part of the national CSDS initiative. The present consortium shared the initial cost of purchasing the 2006 Census UPP data in October 2008. One of the partnership’s first acts was to change its name to Growing Prosperity in the Capital Region. Now that the data tables have all been received the partnership has moved into its second phase: Data Analysis, Reporting and Community Outreach and Involvement. Kimberley Stratford, Sustainability Analyst with the City of Victoria has taken on the role as project lead for the project.

Prediction of Vortex Breakdown over Wing Geometries Using Detached-Eddy Simulation

The formation of vortices and their interaction with the aircraft wing and body is one the most interesting problems in aerodynamics. These vortices are usually generated and convected from different parts of the lift providing devices. Their interaction with the flow field, can case unsteady force and vibration. At some configurations, it can alter the aerodynamics characteristics of the aircraft by inducing separated regions in the flow field which causes sudden loss of the lift know as stall condition. Extensive information about this phenomenon can be obtained through a computer simulation during the design process in order to provide required data for the efficient design of the aircraft. In this research, a computer simulation of this problem will be carried out using an accurate numerical discretization technique.

Effect of Shape Parameterization and Optimization Algorithms on Adjoint Based Aerodynamic Shape Optimization

A very important phase in aircraft design is the aerodynamic design of the wing and various other components; wing-body fairing, tailplane, etc. With today’s computer power and progress in algorithm development, the design is made through complex mathematical models which are amenable to automatic optimization. An industrial adjoint-based three-dimensional viscous optimization framework, developed at Bombardier Aerospace, will be made more efficient by performing code-to-code validation with research codes at UTIAS. Improvements in all area of the framework will be examined, ie. aerodynamic paramterization, mesh movement and optimization algorithms. The importance of overall robustness of the framework will be demonstrated on test cases. The benefits will be to increase the technological readiness level of the automated industrial aerodynamic design framework. 

Collaborative Recommendation Systems in Online Social Networks

The intern, along with his collaborator will explore both theoretically and empirically models of influence over social networks, recommendation systems of online content for users in social networks. Additionally, the intern will study various different ways to cluster and group the content of networks such as Twitter in an automated fashion. Additionally, the intern plans to study various different algorithmic problem the pertain to information retrieval and online content.

TRA(P) – A Language for Describing Motion in 2d Contemporary Art

The internship will investigate existing techniques and languages to analyze, describe and visualize  motion, movement or flow characteristics in a number of different fields and application areas including optical flow for video and visual effects, and Laban Motion Analysis for physical movement. The goal is to draw on existing approaches to define a language to describe motion in 2D art images, and for the purpose of manipulating images to better suit different compositions and spatial layouts. Active image analysis and visual search research is looking at attributes such as colour and similarity, but there is little work in the analysis of motion in images – something that is often used in layperson’s terms to describe the emotional quality of images. Farmboy Fine Arts, as the partner organization, will benefit from the research with its application in developing internal production tools and potentially new innovative product offerings to its clients in the hospitality industry.

Energy Storage Systems that uses Repurposed Battery for support of Renewable Energy Generation

Used electric vehicle batteries will soon become a commodity in the expanding electric vehicle market. Furthermore, the push for cleaner energy from renewable sources is rapidly gaining popularity. Thus, the Manitoba HVDC Research Center’s work on the development of a battery energy storage system that will use aged electric vehicle batteries to store renewable energy will be of great benefit to the world’s transportation and energy economy. However, since batteries suffer from aging affects that limit their ability to maintain designed capacity, current and voltage ratings, therefore, there is a need to develop a system that will take into account the above factors. The research conducted in this project will look at these factors during the development of a Repurposed Battery Energy Storage System. This system will use pulse charge regulation, virtually parallel integration of the batteries and multilevel operation techniques to further the life of the aged batteries. It will also develop a suitable means of storing and delivering the energy to and from a DC bus.