Innovative Projects Realized

Generative AI for Dynamic Environment Creation in VR & AR

This project will use state-of-the-art advancements in artificial intelligence in order to automate and enhance the creation of virtual environments in virtual and augmented reality. By building upon previous successes incorporating artificial intelligence into the creation of 2D environments to enhance and guide the algorithmic generation process. By allowing the incorporated AI to respond and learn from the guidance of preferences of a level designer or even an end user, this project will allow for the creation of environments that are tailored to the specific needs of digital media creation without a significant amount of overhead and time typically required for their creation. This has applications in generating so called ‘endless’ content which is popular in many interactive games. Nomad XR will benefit from the incorporation of this technology into its own projects, allowing Nomad XR to save time and money when generating content.

Renewable Diesel fuel from Fischer–Tropsch synthesis

Greenfield Global has been developing a process that aims to convert renewable materials to produce sustainable jet fuel (SAF). In addition to SAF, it is possible to produce other fuels such as diesel. Greenfield Global has been awarded a federal government grant which aims at developing a novel process for the production of renewable diesel from agricultural wastes. A key process step in this project is Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis and upgrading to drop-in fuels particularly renewable diesel. Hence, the current proposal is crafted to support this project by focusing on FT-based diesel fuel. Diesel fuel produced via upgraded FT synthetic crude is characterized by its poor cold flow properties. To improve the cold flow properties of the FT diesel, different approaches are explored in order to meet the specifications of the Canadian Diesel Fuel Standard. This will be beneficial as the produced FT-based diesel fuel can be used in the agriculture industry and also provide energy resources to unconnected communities to the electricity grid.

Aligned Carbon Nanotube/Organic Semiconductor Heterojunction in Phototransistors

Photodetectors are one of the fundamental elements of optoelectronic circuits. Phototransistors produce current both by absorbing light and also taking advantage of the gate electrode to increase gain. Solution-processed electronics has many advantages, including low-cost and low-temperature fabrication. In thin-film transistors (TFTs), the channel can be made with carbon-based semiconductors such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs are flexible, have mechanical strength, and require low processing temperatures. In a heterojunction with a polymer in a phototransistor, the polymer acts as the absorber to convert photons into electrical charges, and the CNTs transport the carriers to the terminals. The proposed research project will focus on studying inkjet printing of CNTs as a scalable, patterned thin-film deposition technique. We will study the effect of printed film morphology and CNT alignment during drying on the blend interfaces and phototransistor performance. Our hypothesis is that the CNT alignment will affect the transport of photogenerated carriers and charge transfer in the device.

Characterizing groundwater-surface water interactions in constructed side-channel habitat along a gravel bed river floodplain

On the former floodplain of the Mamquam River in Squamish, British Columbia are a series of side-channels that were constructed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 1983-1996. These channels were built to restore some of the side-channel habitat that was lost following the dyking of the Mamquam River mainstem for flood protection. The Mamquam side-channels are highly productive chum (Onchorhynchus keta) and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) habitat, however the channels typically go dry in the summer when there is very little to no rain. This results in stranding events for juvenile coho salmon that remain in the channels throughout the summer. There is concern amongst the community that nearby irrigation by the Squamish Valley Golf Course is causing the side-channels to go dry. This study is investigating this concern by monitoring the spatial and temporal distribution of water flow in the side-channels and the groundwater throughout the summer. Findings from this study will inform future restoration actions in the side-channels.

Study and development of egg substitutes in baked goods and emulsions

Plant-based analogues are considered a sustainable alternative to animal products due to their minimal environmental impact. Commonly used egg substitutes range from apple sauce and other pureed fruits and vegetables to flax and chia seed gels, to leavening agents. Aquafaba, the leftover liquid from cooking pulses, has recently gained a lot of attention in the vegan community due to its foaming and emulsifying ability, making it an ideal egg substitute. Rigorous research studies on the use of aquafaba in baked goods and emulsions, however, is minimal. This project will investigate the molecular interactions responsible for the unique properties of aquafaba made of different pulses. Understanding these interactions will allow for the development of egg substitutes made from a combination of pulses, with or without added protein, tailored for specific purposes such angel and sponge cakes, and emulsions such as mayonnaise and margarine. The choice of food products represents minimal and rich cakes, oil-in-water, and water-in-oil emulsions, essentially surveying a large category of foodstuffs requiring replacers.

Mobile Devices for Market Research with Reporting and Predictive Analysis

eThor is a startup company that develops applications for mobile devices in the area of e-commerce for wholesale and retail customers, initially in the restaurant industry. The internships proposed in this application relate to the expansion of data gathering, data mining and social network capabilities for the applications development. The data gathered will be transformed into a unified structure. The data will then be used in a classification and network evolution phase that will be used to predict the growth areas where applications could be profitably developed. Advanced predictive analytical techniques will be employed. The system produced will be integrated into the eThor framework to enable its use in developing robust productions applications. In this work the interns will acquire skills during the development phase and also learn to interact with a new dynamic start-up company.

Ecological Interaction Perception in Multi-Talker Environments

The process of identifying someone is talking to you and listening to that talker is one of the most complicated tasks people perform every day. This task is still not well-solved for robotics and it represents one of the fundamental barriers to effective human-robot interaction. For both humans and robots, several social cues must be observed and processed, and then natural language understanding performed to first determine that a speaker is talking to an observer. Next, the observer must attend to and recognize what a speaker is saying. The proposed project will break this process down into individual components and attempt to solve it using a combination of pre-existing and novel techniques to 1) identify talkers in an environment, 2) determine which if any talks are addressing the observer, and 3) perceive and recognize the speech of talkers addressing the observer. With the proposed project, we aim to produce a robotics system capable of identifying when speech is directed at the system, and then perceiving that speech in a natural environment.

Development of Low Smoke Zero Halogen Green Polymer Compounds for Wire and Cable Industry

Currently halogen-based flame retardant is widely used as cable covering material in various industries including oil and gas, transit and industrial utilities. Studies have concluded that these materials will produce toxic gases and acidic fumes, and also persistent against degradation in landfill. These negative consequences resulted in a progressive regulatory restriction on use of halogen-based flame retardant. This project is a direct response to the increased regulation and pending Canadian ban banby developing new low smoke zero halogen (LSZH) flame retardant without the aforementioned problems. New LSZH additives developed by Shawcor will first be characterized to determine its flame retardancy and other properties. Next, innovative nano-additives will be studied and characterized. Possible interactions between multiple additives will then be investigated in order to further improve performance. Finally, the fabrication process will be optimized to make the new composite suitable for mass production. The outcome of this project will offer Shawcor a solution to replace halogen-based flame retardant in its product lineup in response to the increased regulation and pending Canadian ban.

Optimisation du rendement de location d’espace et du taux d’occupation dans un centre de congrès

Avec ses 113 espaces d’une superficie combinée de 51 208 mètres carrés, le Palais des congrès de Montréal est l’un des centres de congrès et d’exposition les plus réputés en Amérique du Nord. Depuis 1983, le site a accueilli plus de 7 700 événements et 19 millions de visiteurs. Le projet de recherche proposé vise à optimiser le taux d’occupation des salles du Palais des congrès de Montréal ainsi que le rendement de location de ses installations en fonction de plusieurs facteurs opérationnels et commerciaux de façon à mieux prévoir les besoins futurs en ressources humaines et physiques. Ce projet permettra au Palais de congrès de Montréal de mettre en place des outils d’intelligence d’affaires s’appuyant sur plusieurs sources de données ainsi que des ratios de référence de l’industrie.

Confection d’un modèle de référence permettant l’optimisation des trajectoires de soins en pneumologie par l’infusion d’innovations technologiques, cliniques, organisationnelles et sociales à l’Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec – Université Laval (IUCPQ-UL)

On estime à 4 000 le manque d’infirmières dans le système de santé québécois. Le manque de personnel est tout aussi endémique chez les autres professionnels de santé. Par ailleurs, il est démontré qu’environ 30% du temps de travail des professionnels de la santé est consacré à diverses tâches administratives.
Notre projet vise la confection d’un modèle de référence pour une transformation significative des trajectoires de soins afin d’augmenter le temps alloué aux pratiques cliniques. Différentes innovations seront mises de l’avant, notamment le recours aux outils informatiques, l’automatisation de certains processus, la création d’outils facilitant les interactions entre les patients et les soignants et la mise en place des meilleures pratiques cliniques. Ces innovations sont d’autant plus pertinentes en contexte pandémique, compte tenu des bénéfices et améliorations apportées à l’organisation, la rendant plus agile et flexible et entraînant, de fait, une amélioration de sa capacité d’adaptation aux changements de contexte.

High-throughput linguistic content comparison and sentiment analysis

Scrawlr is a platform for unconstrained, global interaction with all internet content and users. Scrawlr allows
for user evaluation and unconstrained classification of any Scrawlr-hosted or non-Scrawlr content. For non-
Scrawlr content, this evaluation and classification allowance will be first at the URL level but will subsequently
be provided at the individual content component level. Scrawlr will require the capacity to, in multiple
languages, identify equivalent and similar content. This will enable several key internal functions, including
rapid detection of spam, identification of trending topics in multiple languages, and the automatic
identification of plagiarism in multiple languages. Scrawlr also intends to provide automated sentiment
analysis of the contents. This requires expansion in capacity related to high-throughput multi-language
sentiment analysis and classification. This will enable several key internal functions including determination
of sentiment in multiple languages and comparison of this sentiment in relation to evaluation and
classification metrics. This research project is a critical aspect for the company to ensure automated
protection of unique content on its platform, and in particular content that is protected content, from
duplication and reproduction.

Financial control and reporting systems for robotics deployments

Copperstone Technologies Ltd, is an Edmonton based engineering firm that designs, builds and deploys
its own unique robotic platform. In the past 2 years Copperstone experienced a three-fold growth and
faced several challenges through this high growth period. Copperstone needs to invest in developing new
financial control policies and reporting procedures for better cost awareness and control.

The project will build out the accounting processes and best practices for a rapidly growing company. As
a start-up company, Copperstone created systems and tools that have been outgrown. The MITACS intern
will be a key member in developing the next phase of business growth by developing accounting policies,
improving financial tracking systems and researching and implementing an inventory control system.

Objective 1: On boarding to Copperstone’s financial system.
Objective 2: Developing internal financial reporting tools.
Objective 3: Research inventory control system.