Innovative Projects Realized

A real-time wideband underwater localization system using passive acoustic monitoring

This project provides a software solution for detecting, classifying, and tracking moving sound sources underwater from the generated sounds. Generally, monitoring shipping traffic largely rely on the automatic identification systems (AIS) installed on the vessels. The ability to track these vessels is at the mercy of the functionality of the transponders onboard the vessels and the reliability of the communication link to the base stations. Similarly, to detect and track marine mammals, underwater tags are often embedded on them to provide information about their specific locations. In this project, real-time tracking algorithms are developed on embedded platforms for the detection, localization, and classification of moving sources over a wide bandwidth. The developed system will provide more information in real-time about moving sources in comparison to the existing AIS. The passive solution is also an attractive surveillance solution.

Desirable density

Vancouver’s rental market is Canada’s most expensive. Financial constraints and
need for more space often push families outside of the down-town area towards suburban
areas.
This research intends to suggest a new type of housing likely to increase Vancouver’s
retention capabilities towards this type of inhabitants. According to my preliminary research,
14% of new families decide to quit the city, suggesting that they didn’t find the infrastructures
they were looking for, namely, small apartments with no aCCess to the outside, priced within
than their financial capabilities. Drawing from different models built around the world over the
last 20 years, I’m committed to creating a new type of housing addressing their needs as well
as the City’s densification target. I believe it is utterly important for Vancouver, a City so
internationally prized for its quality of life and social diversity, to diversify its housing offerings
in order to keep its downtown, its beating heart alive.

Porous materials as a filtration method for ship exhaust

The Canadian government has vowed to reduce their pollutant emissions by 2030 in order to curb the effects of climate change. This means that shipping companies must make strides to reduce their overall emissions. This project will use novel sponge-like frameworks, called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), to remove environmentally toxic pollutants from exhaust gas. The materials currently being utilized for pollutant gas removal (e.g.. limestone) are often are very minimally active by weight, this is not the case for MOFs. MOFs possess a large internal surface area making them very active by weight, and ideal for filtration. These frameworks are able to be tailored to target the removal of specific pollutants and do so at a high capacity. If deployed in filters/pellets for marine vessels, MOFs could greatly reduce the waste associated with the current scrubbers while increasing the capacity for pollutant removal and ultimately slowing the onset of climate change.

Automated diagnosis of liver fibrosis and steatosis using deep-learning algorithms applied to conventional liver ultrasound

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most common liver disorders worldwide. NAFLD could lead to end-stage liver disease and considered as one of the most common causes of liver transplantation. Moreover, a large number of liver transplant recipients develop NAFLD after transplantation due to side effects of the medications that they have to use to keep their new liver healthy. Although liver biopsy has been used for a long time to evaluate the liver condition it is associated with a risk of bleeding and other side effects. Consequently, we aim to improve simple liver ultrasound method by adding some artificial intelligence algorithms to the images obtained from this method to diagnose NAFLD and other liver disorders after transplantation. By doing so, clinicians will be able to perform real-time liver ultrasound without the need to refer the patients to a radiologist for the procedure.

Green & Culturally Appropriate BuildingDesign

The project aims to develop a process to design houses using locally sourced materials and labor.
This process can be transferrable to other communities in the future when they approach a new
housing project in their region. This would be culturally and aesthetically in line with the vernacular.
The design will incorporate passive systems that make use of the naturally occurring forces of nature
(i.e., wind, sun, etc.) to provide better living conditions. People residing in the communities have been
consulted with in the past by Ecotrust Canada to gather information that will be critical in designing the
aesthetics as well as the functional components of the buildings. This project would provide
community members with employment opportunities, during the construction stage, and in the future
maintenance of the homes. There will be an economic analysis pertaining to monthly spending on
water, utilities and electricity bills to get a better understanding of the feasibility of adopting energy
and water savinG…tobecont’d…

Scheduling of agents from forecasted future callarrivals at Hydro-Quebec’s call centers

The call center managers at Hydro-Quebec (HQ) need to deliver both low operating costs and high
service quality. Their task is made especially difficult because they need to handle a large-size
workforce (more than 1000 employees) while meeting an incoming demand which is typically both
time-varying and uncertain. The current techniques of determining the schedules of each employee
according to the forecasted future call volumes at HQ are often unreliable, and there is a need for new
and more accurate methods.
In this project, we propose addressing the concerns of the call center managers at HQ by developing
new methods for multi-activity shift scheduling that consider the very specific union regulations of HQ
(variable schedules) and are validated by mathematically simulating the main event that rule the callcenter
(arrival calls, processing time, abandonment, etc.). Our method will exploit the strong
properties of language-based model to efficiently consider complex regulations, as well as the
accuracy of mathematical simulation to reproduce in…TOBECONT’D…

CONCEPTION ET FABRICATION D’UN BANC D’ESSAI POUR UN RÉCOLTEUR D’ÉNERGIE PROVENANT DU ROTOR D’UN HÉLICOPTÈRE

La récolte d’énergie (“energy harvesting” ou “energy scavenging”) a connu une croissance importante au cours des dernières années. C’est le processus de récupération de l’énergie (voir Figure 1) des sources externes (solaire, thermique, éolienne, acoustique, mécanique/cinétique, etc.) et de conversion en électricité utile à petite échelle. Dans l’industrie aéronautique en particulier, la conversion d’énergie vibratoire en énergie immédiatement utilisable ou stockable pour alimenter des capteurs, des microprocesseurs ou encore des micro-systèmes électromécaniques (MEMS) peut être une voie intéressante vers l’optimisation énergétique. La récupération d’énergie vibratoire serait encore plus profitable notamment pour les engins volants du futur qui seront, pour la plupart, propulsés par des moteurs électriques. L’objectif de ce projet de recherche est donc de concevoir et de fabriquer un banc d’essai de récolte d’énergie vibratoire résiduelle provenant du système de transmission principal d’un hélicoptère. Une approche globale combinant des analyses numériques et des essais expérimentaux sera utilisée pour évaluer la faisabilité, l’applicabilité et la robustesse des solutions proposées. Ce projet de recherche sera réalisé au Laboratoire d’Analyse Vibratoire et Acoustique (LAVA) du département de génie mécanique de l’École Polytechnique de Montréal, en collaboration avec Bell Textron Canada Ltd.

Mots clés : récolteurs d’énergie, conversion d’énergie, efficacité, vibration

CONCEPTION ET FABRICATION D’UN BANC D’ESSAI POUR UN RÉCOLTEUR D’ÉNERGIE PROVENANT DU ROTOR D’UN HÉLICOPTÈRE

La récolte d’énergie (“energy harvesting” ou “energy scavenging”) a connu une croissance importante au cours des dernières années. C’est le processus de récupération de l’énergie (voir Figure 1) des sources externes (solaire, thermique, éolienne, acoustique, mécanique/cinétique, etc.) et de conversion en électricité utile à petite échelle. Dans l’industrie aéronautique en particulier, la conversion d’énergie vibratoire en énergie immédiatement utilisable ou stockable pour alimenter des capteurs, des microprocesseurs ou encore des micro-systèmes électromécaniques (MEMS) peut être une voie intéressante vers l’optimisation énergétique. La récupération d’énergie vibratoire serait encore plus profitable notamment pour les engins volants du futur qui seront, pour la plupart, propulsés par des moteurs électriques. L’objectif de ce projet de recherche est donc de concevoir et de fabriquer un banc d’essai de récolte d’énergie vibratoire résiduelle provenant du système de transmission principal d’un hélicoptère. Une approche globale combinant des analyses numériques et des essais expérimentaux sera utilisée pour évaluer la faisabilité, l’applicabilité et la robustesse des solutions proposées. Ce projet de recherche sera réalisé au Laboratoire d’Analyse Vibratoire et Acoustique (LAVA) du département de génie mécanique de l’École Polytechnique de Montréal, en collaboration avec Bell Textron Canada Ltd.

Mots clés : récolteurs d’énergie, conversion d’énergie, efficacité, vibration

Improving Health Information System Safety: Development of Novel Approaches for Identifying, Tracking and Preventing Technology-Induced Error

In Canada healthcare is being modernized and transformed through a range of new healthcare
information technologies and systems. Applications of information systems such as electronic health
records (EHRs), electronic medical decision support and an increasing range of mobile health
applications promise to transform and improve healthcare and increase patient safety. However,
although such technology has huge potential benefits, research has shown that if not designed, tested
and implemented properly such technology also has the potential to introduce new types of error – i.e.
technology-induced error that arises during the complex interaction of health information systems with
healthcare workers under the varied complex situations and environments in which healthcare IT is
deployed. In this proposal AE Informatics will be able to extend its pioneering research in this area in
developing new and novel methods for detecting, classifying and mitigating technology-induced error in
healthcare IT. The cluster of projects include work in improving the safety of key healthcare processes
for ensuring medication safety…TOBECONT’D…

Inputs and outputs of inhibitory reticulospinal cells in lampreys

Locomotion is a basic act that humans and animals use in everyday life to move in the environment. There has been an ongoing effort for at least a century to understand the mechanisms that the brain uses to control locomotion, including starting and stopping. Studying those mechanisms at the level of single neurons, and finding how their participate in locomotion is a difficult task, especially in humans and mammals, mostly because of the large number of neurons involved and the very complex networks that they form. This is why researchers have always looked for simpler animal models that can still provide insights as to how locomotion works in humans. One such model is an aquatic vertebrate that swims with simple ondulatory movements, the lamprey. This peculiar fish has a very simple brain with neurons and general structures that are very similar to what is found in humans. Previous studies on lampreys have shown that some cells that participate in controlling locomotion are inhibitory in nature but their role hasn’t yet been defined. A possible role of these cells would be to send an inhibitory signal to the spinal cord that would help stop ongoing locomotion.

Extended Cloud Computing and Applications September 2012-April2014

This MITACS Accelerate program will support a internships for graduate students in the areas of
services and applications using next generation communications, Internet, and cloud computing. The
interns will be placed in Canadian telecom and networking providers and vendors and will undertake
research projects defined jointly with these partners. The program will prepare graduates to work and
industry and will foster collaboration between universities and industry. The program will strengthen
the Canadian industrial base in information and communications technology through the preparation of
highly qualified manpower with expertise in the design and operation of globally competitive ICT
infrastructure and the creation of innovative and disruptive products, services, and applications.

Understanding 3D Spatial-Data from Health, Trade and Customer Service VR Training Simulator

The proposed research is a collaboration between Virtro and SFU’s iVizLab to collaboratively work on ways to understand the processes involved in analyzing and visualizing 3D spatial data. iVizLab’s research focuses on AI based computational models, in this case a data visualization tool that help users analyze 3D spatial data. In creating this user interface, the iVizLab will help teachers find insights and make sense of the errors their students do in a VR training simulator to provide personalized feedback to each student. The intern will be working closely with the partner organization to work on understanding the needs of the analyst and to translate them into an easy to use system. Further, the intern will be working on ways to apply machine-learning methods that help simplify the process of analyzing complex data.