Innovative Projects Realized

Uplink Resource Allocation in Wireless Backhaul Networks

The internship project involves performance improvement in current cellular networks through wireless backhaul

interference mitigation. In particular, the problem of RBM to hub assignment and resource allocation amongst

the hubs are tackled in the uplink transmission of wireless backhaul networks. The intern is expected to

investigate current developed algorithm at BLiNQ Wireless Inc. as well as promising solutions in the literature

and adjust these schemes to the uplink communication. The work is motivated by the sponsoring company’s

interest in interference mitigation and performance evaluation of current wireless backhaul networks. This work

will serve as an initial step towards investigation of novel schemes as well as the schemes currently in use by

BLiNQ in the uplink of wireless backhaul networks.

Advanced Multi-camera vehicle identification, tracking and geo-localization system

The proposed project proposes design solutions for a Multi-camera vehicle identification, tracking and geo-localization system. The systems is constrained to use video streams from inexpensive surveillance cameras, and leverages image recognition software trained to detect and track vehicles in a controlled area. This will allow apps to pinpoint vehicles easily and reliably. Such technology works well in controlled environments but faces serious challenges when deployed in the real world. Anisotropic image backgrounds, distorted and noisy camera images, dirty vehicles, and difficult meteorological conditions make object recognition and object tracking more difficult. The artificial intelligence modules will be part of a robust distributed platform that offers strong back-end services and user-friendly interfaces, to support many sites and many cameras.

Affine Multivariate GARCH Models

The objective of the proposed research program is to develop a flexible and unified multivariate framework for modeling the returns of financial assets. The program is innovative since it establishes closed-form formulas for an efficient and reliable calculation of risk measures and derivative prices. For financial institutions and government regulators, who are performing pricing and risk management calculations very frequently with thousands of assets, closed form solutions are of immense importance. The proposed research program is applied to the stock market since this is the centerpiece of financial markets and the only market for which the necessary comprehensive data are currently available, though generalizations to other markets are obvious.

Optimisation de la gestion d’une flotte de vehicules de service specialises

L’objectif principal de ce rapport d’achevement est d’optimiser la gestion d’une flotte de

vehicules de services specialises.

Pour cela deux missions seront faites chez notre organisme partenaire. Premierement une

analyse comparative des pieces OEM versus les pieces du marche secondaire (aftermarket)

nous permettra de detinir quelle est I’option la plus interessante en termes de coOts et de

qualite. Des tests seront effectues sur les freins de plusieurs camionnettes chez notre

partenaire.

Deuxiemement une etude sera lancee sur Ie cycle de vie des vehicules afin de determiner

I’age economique ideal, sous plusieurs criteres. Des analyses comparatives seront

notamment effectuees pour situer I’entreprise face a ses concurrents, mais aussi pour

differencier la flotte montrealaise de notre partenaire, de celie qu’il dispose en region (types

de pannes differents? frequence des pannes? age economique different?).

Suite a ces deux (2) missions, je developperai des capsules de cours pour completer Ie futur

projet academique (programme court de quinze (15) credits que souhaie lancer I’ETS en

partenariat avec plusieurs entreprises….TOBECONT’d

Relevance of security intelligence data for cyber insurance risk quantification

Cyber insurance is a relatively new and growing insurance product that provides companies with compensation following cybersecurity incidents involving data breaches, business interruption, digital asset loss and/or cyber extortion. The ever-changing nature of cyber technology combined with the lack of a large history of cyber insurance claims makes it challenging for insurance companies to rapidly assess risk and determine appropriate premiums for all of their cyber insurance clients, especially for small-to-medium sized enterprises. This project aims to investigate how security intelligence data products and security-related events at can be leveraged to help The Co-operators better quantify the relative cyber risks faced by its cyber insurance clients.

Investigation of the Foam Airbag Performance For Wheelchair Application

Wheelchairs are one of the most important devices in rehabilitation that have immensely improved the

quality of life for people with disabilities and impairments. Wheelchairs are subject to tips and falls,

that can cause injuries. For a person who relies on a wheelchair for mobility, such injuries can have

significant short and long-term effects on quality of life and independence. Implementation of safety

measures in wheelchairs has not advanced to the extent utilized in automobiles. Despite their

overwhelming advantages in automobiles, airbags are not utilized for wheelchairs mainly due to their

high cost, weight, and being single-use. This project proposes to facilitate the development of a fall

injury protection device for wheelchairs, using our novel foam airbag technology. The irreversible

process of chemical reaction or compressed air containers for airbag deployment is replaced by foam

for its high compressibility and fast shape rebound characteristics.

Gut health biomarkers development in pigs and poultry

Antibiotic use in animals, mostly for gut disease, plays a major role in the emerging public health crisis of antibiotic resistance in zoonotic pathogens. This is very worrying given the growing global demand for animal protein. There is no clear definition of gut health and no biomarkers can capture the gut complexity. By designing a panel of biomarkers of gut health based on data mining approach, this project will help to understand the role of antibiotic growth promoters to efficiently replace especially those use in prevention to maintain or improve animal health, welfare, and performance while reducing antibiotic resistance.

Support cases resolution retrieval

Coveo provides search and recommendation software for customer support systems in which customers can ask for help by entering a case description and, on the other side, support agents must find the solution. In this context, queries to Coveo are in the form of long texts describing a problem and potential solutions are knowledge articles or help documents.
Support cases resolution retrieval (SCRR), at its very core, requires a mapping of casual English text, possibly with grammatical mistakes, to well-formed formal English documents. This mapping problem closely resembles a well-studied problem in natural language processing (NLP) that is neural machine translation (NMT). However, unlike most publicly available datasets of NMT, SCRR aims to map a long query sequence (the support case) to an even longer target sequence (the resolution document). Although, recement language model based approaches such as GPT, BERT, XLNET etc. have provided means of overcoming this issue, practical uses are yet to be explored.

Réduction des risques liés aux troubles musculo-squelettiques (TMS) et aux vibrations main-bras lors d’activités d’ébavurage chez Héroux-Devtek Inc. – Part 2

La recherche vise à développer un poste de travail incluant des outils manuels, des méthodes de travail, des dispositifs de maintien des pièces, d’aspiration des poussières, et d’éclairage qui permettent de réduire les facteurs de risques à la santé et à la sécurité des travailleurs dans une usine de remise à neuf de pièces de train d’atterrissage d’aéronefs. Ces facteurs de risques sont liés principalement aux mauvaises postures de travail, aux efforts importants lors du travail, ainsi qu’aux vibrations excessives provenant des outils utilisés. Des prototypes de postes seront développés puis testés dans en situation réelle ou représentative de travail.

The inter-language reliability of BrainScreen in co-ordinate bilinguals

Early detection of cognitive decline (e.g., Dementia) allows for early intervention of treatment and, in turn, a

better overall prognosis. However, a full neuropsychological assessment (which lasts 4-10 hours) would not be

feasible or reasonable for many individuals. Thus, a cognitive screening measure, such as BrainScreen

(developed using a previous MITACS Accelerate grant), would be used as a quick, cost-effective and sensitive

test for cognitive decline. To increase the utility of this test to non-English speaking individuals, various

translations of the test will be created using the Ortsbo Inc. translation service. Therefore, the current study

proposes to translate BrainScreen into the top five languages spoken in Toronto and to test bilingual individuals

on English and their native language. The results will be compared to measure the relative reliability of the

translated versions. The expected benefit to the partner organization is in-line with their mission statement,

which is to invest in new technologies that connect people with brands.

Evaluating the impact of culturally-sensitized brokerage or coaching on refugee newcomers’ nutritional acculturation in a pilot program

Refugee newcomers tend to experience “food” culture shock and are at greater risk of food insecurity due to inadequate social programs. Hybrid social programs may help boost refugee newcomer confidence through knowledge exchange during intercultural culinary experiences. Therefore, this project aims to: First, promote effective cultural brokerage between community sponsor groups and refugee newcomers; Second, empower newcomers to participate in multicultural and intercultural activities during their nutritional transitions into a Canadian “foodscape” in a pilot program. By evaluating the pilot program, the project hopes to contribute to knowledge on the best practices of supporting refugee newcomers during their nutritional transitions in Canada using culturally-sensitive tools and resources.

Geographic Risk Visualization for Unmanned Traffic Management

Risk evaluation is a crucial aspect of Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) systems. Risk is calculated for missions involving unmanned systems and includes numerous factors from both ground and air risks. Currently, the risk evaluation and calculation for a mission is done by hand and based on estimations. Furthermore, the final calculated risk for a mission is difficult to conceptualize due to the high complexity of the UTM system and the method of risk calculation. This project aims to develop a system to aid in the conceptualization by providing aggregated data used for risk analysis and visualization techniques of the data and risks through software. Accomplishing this will involve collecting data used in risk analysis, analyzing the data for relevant information, and developing visualizations for the data. This project will benefit the partner organization in becoming an industry leader in Detect and Avoid and UTM systems.