Recent work in the human-robot interaction community has revealed drones as social entities with emotional capabilities, beyond their initial status of mechanical objects. We build upon this work and envision drones as emotional support technology. To evaluate the validity of this concept, we outlined a design space for Emotional Support Drones (ESD) in our preliminary […]

This research and development project intends to improve the performance of a dental implant stability measurement (ISMS) device made by Prefail Dental Solutions Inc. The technical improvements proposed by this project includes (i) developing an impeoved and reliable signal processing technique, (ii) designing a calibration unit, (iii) designing a new tip for the ISMS clinical […]

The mining industry is undergoing a tremendous revolution, as an increasing number of components are being automated, which presents unresolved engineering challenges. The current proposal is to develop quantitative frameworks to evaluate modern control and automation strategies, simulating the impacts of uncertainty in ore tonnages and system-wide automated responses that would mitigate these impacts. The […]

This project aims to investigate the benefits of using linguistic cues for extracting speech-of-interest from competing background noise. Given an algorithm which detects formants of a speaker of interest within an audio signal which includes background noise, and given that the limits of such an approach are reached when formants of the speaker of interest […]

Transportation services, ranging from public buses to private logistics fleets, could benefit significant from the introduction of Rogers’ 5G wireless networks. This project has a primary objective to support UBC’s efforts to achieve its 2050 emissions reductions goals, with an emphasis on a reduction of GHG and air pollutant emissions from transportation services.

The aim of this project is to improve simultaneous EEG-fMRI techniques through the use of constrained principal component analysis (CPCA). The main problem with combining EEG measures and fMRI measures is that recording EEG in the MR scanner always injects noise into the data. CPCA partitions the variability of the data into systematic and error […]

The proposed project will assess the potential for converting many small patches of farmland to natural habitat. In particular, it will assess both the ecological effectiveness and the economic feasibility of such land restoration. It will map unproductive patches of land within fields where soybean is grown, across all of Southern Ontario, using a combination […]

Hospitals use different warming techniques for surgery patients to prevent them from hypothermia, i.e., becoming cold during their operation. Many warming techniques are commonly available and used but studies on their holistic environmental impacts are lacking. The overall environmental impacts and economic costs of products or services can be assessed using life cycle assessment (LCA) […]

Mobile phone, media and entertainment sectors are of critical importance to our economy. With the massive usage of mobile devices (e.g., British Columbia has the highest smartphone penetration among all provinces in Canada) and increasing popularity of smartphone camera applications and mobile social networks, automatic image tagging is crucial for the next-generation mobile social media […]

Medulloblastoma is the most common form of pediatric brain cancer with a five-year survival rate of approximately 70%, yet for some children’s survival is as low as 40%. Many of the treatment options for these patients may be effective in extending the five-year survival rate, however, quality of life issues still persist for these young […]

The goal of this project is to improve the process by which professional energy managers and utility company personnel analyze large amounts of data related to energy consumption. This process is often exploratory, meaning that many analysis questions are open-ended and cannot be phrased as a directed query. Open-ended exploration can be supported by information […]

The use of aluminum alloys in automotive applications is increasing since this allows the weight of the vehicle to be decreased. This is beneficial for both internal combustion and battery powered vehicles, to increase fuel economy and increase vehicle range, respectively. However, in general, aluminum alloys are more difficult to form than steel and their […]