Innovative Projects Realized

Détection de l’état des roulements avec des mesures ultrasoniques

La compagnie P&W Canada souhaite améliorer ses processus d’inspection et de détection. Plus

spécifiquement, elle a ciblé deux requis critiques pour le fonctionnement et le rendement d’une

turbine. Le premier est l’état des roulements du rotor (avant et après assemblage ainsi qu’après le

test final avant livraison au client). Le deuxième critère est la présence de fuites après assemblage. Il

s’agit essentiellement de localiser les micro-fuites d’air, de carburant ou de lubrifiant.

Un roulement présente plusieurs stades de dégradation. Les techniques usuelles d’inspection de la

dégradation des roulements utilisent les vibrations dans la gamme de fréquence audible (<= 20 kHz) ou le bruit (oreille, stéthoscope, etc.) et permettent de détecter les défauts de roulements dans leur troisième stade de dégradation (vie résiduelle supérieure à 1%). Pour améliorer la précocité et la fiabilité de la détection, P&W Canada s’est associée à l’ÉTS pour développer des outils intelligents basés sur une nouvelle technologie de mesure dans le domaine ultrasonique (20-100 kHz). Il.................................

Optimization of an MR TOF for Barium-tagging with nEXO

A multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR TOF) has been fully designed, simulated, and optimized at McGill university. The MR TOF will be machined, assembled and commissioned throughout 2019. To facilitate this process, the student will travel to the RIKEN Nishina center and gain experience in operating and maintaining an existing MR TOF. This will provide valuable insight into any unforeseen considerations that could be involved with commissioning an MR TOF. It will also equip the student with the expertise needed to conduct research with such a device, under the guidance of experienced researchers.
The goal of the project is to apply an optimization routine, developed at McGill, to an existing MR TOF. This will provide a benchmark for the new MR TOF before it has been commissioned. It will also yield insight into the relationship between simulated and real performance, which will help to troubleshoot issues that arise during commissioning.

Regime Switch Analysis on Time-series Data for Financial Prediction

In recent years, the emergence of massive temporal data has become a reality in almost all aspects of social life, economic activity, security and defense, and poses a big challenge for existing methods. This project focuses on prediction from temporal data that arise ubiquitously in healthcare, social, industrial and financial fields. Events typically include changes in health status such as hospital readmission or death, evolution in social networks such that communities arise or vanish, modifications in energy consumption (e.g., wattage changes) and regime changes in stock markets. To address these, we need advanced survival analysis methods and algorithms.

Animator Agency in Japan’s Character-Centric Media Mix

Human control over technology has become an increasingly political question. As we struggle to regain control over technology, dealing with the effects of the Anthropocene and global climate change, we are lead to ask: do we deserve to have control in the first place? Not limited to the impact on the natural environment, animate media are one more technology for which control is slipping out of human hands. Do media now animate us, and if so how do we respond? This research asks the question: what is the role of human agency in Japan’s media mix? Through an analysis of magical girl media mixes such that of Studio Trigger’s Kill la Kill, this project asks who animates who in the broader mix of animators of all kinds.

Braiding new possibilities for co-existence: holding spaces for difficult conversations

This project uses social cartography as its main methodological and collaborative tool to map practices that enable or hinder successful collaborations in spaces of socially engaged art between members of various communities in historic dissonance. These include artists from Indigenous and other racialized communities. More specifically, this project explores the potentials of post-representational uses of social cartography, as forms of “cognitive art” that are socially engaged in ways that challenge dominant forms of representation and agenda setting. The partner organisation in this project, the Musagetes Foundation, is supporting many projects of socially engaged art and this project will produce collaborative cartographies with the supported artists that will model the creation of spaces of encounter that are inclusive, open and rigorous. The process will be documented and reported in scholarly articles and reports available via Musagetes ArtsEverywhere website to other audiences and organizations.

In vitro digestibility of resistant starch after high-temperature cooking with Rapid Visco Analyzer 4800

In this project, the intern will have the opportunity to work in Perten Instruments Canada and Carbohydrate Chemistry and Utilization Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan to use the latest model of Rapid Visco Analyzer 4800 (developed by Perten Instruments) to evaluate the performance of resistant starch. The new instrument has the capability to heat resistant starch slurry up to 140°C, which is a significant improvement from previous models as they can only reach a heating temperature of 95°C. This unique feature will enable food ingredient and processing companies to evaluate the digestibility of resistant starch during high temperature food processing, such as in the manufacture of canned, extruded, and dairy products. The research will significantly expand our knowledge on the digestibility of resistant starch, which will be essential for utilizing RVA 4800 as a powerful tool to assess the application value of resistant starch ingredients in different food products.

PITCH – Proactive Integrated Tech-enabled Patient-Centric Healthcare

PITCH is a new initiative focussed on understanding new models for delivering sustainable and proactive health assessments with a focus on patient engagement. It is a collaborative program that includes computer scientists, engineers, data scientists, clinicians, home care providers, and industry partners. In this work, we aim to develop novel security, auditing, analysis and visualization tools to support this and other emerging digital health systems and connected devices. In particular, we aim to understand the requirements for creating safe, private, actionable, and trustable data that can be used by patients, caregivers, and decision makers

Algorithme décisionnel intelligent pour systèmes de stockage énergétique.

Tandis que la diversité et l’efficacité des ressources énergétiques ne cessent de croître, l’emmagasinement d’énergie à moyenne et grande échelle constitue un des défis majeurs de notre secteur énergétique actuel.
Le présent projet met en place une politique décisionnelle automatisée à base d’intelligence artificielle, spécialement entraînée par rapport à l’impact de ses décisions. Ceci permet d’une part d’optimiser le comportement de tout dispositif de stockage sans se soucier de sa nature, de sa technologie ou de ses spécificités; d’autre part de présenter une adaptation continue et en temps réel au changement dans son environnement suite à son instauration.
Le projet bénéfique pour l’environnement et le développement durable présente un intérêt autant pour les distributeurs électriques, que pour les institutions publiques, les clients privés et les industriels.

FortisBC-UBCO Collaborative Research Project: Smart Energy Chair

Exploring the best smart energy choices to meet the growing energy needs of British Columbia (BC) is important due to Canada’s new climate change mitigation targets as well as the rising economic burdens of energy use. A collaborative study has been proposed between UBCO and FortisBC identify smart solutions energy conservation, climate change mitigation, demand side management, and the development of net-zero communities, and to provide recommendations and define long-term implementation strategies for the above smart energy choices. This study will explore the state-of-the-art technologies in building energy use and hybrid energy systems, and will provide in depth guidance to decision makers and general public on complying with energy efficient standards and making the best energy choices form their buildings and communities.

Optimisation de la chaîne logistique des blocs opèratoires

Les blocs opératoires sont un des services les plus dépendants des activités logistiques. Lors

d’une opération le chirurgien doit avoir les bons outils au bon moment pour que celle-ci se

déroule dans les meilleures conditions. Pour cela, toute une chaîne d’approvisionnement

s’organise afin d’accomplir cette tâche complexe. En effet, les produits utilisés sont des

instruments et fournitures pour la plus part à haute valeur ajoutée et périssables.

L’entreprise MindCore Conseil, spécialisée en amélioration des processus autant dans le

domaine manufacturier que dans celui des services, nous a soumis le projet d’optimiser la

chaîne logistique des blocs opératoires des hôpitaux du CHUM. L’objectif principal est ainsi

de réduire les coûts de logistique mais aussi de libérer le personnel de soin des activités

d’approvisionnement.

Dans cette étude, nous devons utiliser des outils d’optimisation logistiques qui ont déjà fait

leurs preuves dans le milieu manufacturier. Il faudra ainsi analyser l’ensemble de ces outils et

estimer lesquels pourront être adaptés et efficaces pour les implanter et………………………………..

National Smart Vehicle Demonstration and Integration Project

This Mitacs research project will help develop a data collection strategy by identifying key variables such as the kinds of data sets and frequency of collection required. In addition, this Mitacs project will help determine what types of databases are required for data storage and which analytical procedures should be used on the data sets. Data collection and data management strategies must be established in order to standardize the collected data sets for comparable analytics which will inform cities for future deployments.

OSPE advocates to all levels of government on policies and regulations related to engineering. OSPE will benefit from the research as findings are anticipated to be pertinent in developing policy recommendations to present to government. OSPE is currently developing an ‘App’ to encourage engineering students and recent graduates to seek careers in smart mobility industries. The Mitacs research will provide OSPE members, especially students, with exciting examples of how important technology is in new economy industries.

Teaching artificial agents to play complex video games from demonstrations

The goal of this research project is to develop novel technics to teach artificial agents how to play complex video games using reinforcement learning and demonstrations. Namely, we wish to propose a novel approach for learning from demonstrations, in which an agent simultaneously learns a behavior and the corresponding reward signal. This training procedure will rely on generative adversarial imitation learning in order to learn from expert demonstrations (in our case from players). We also want to tackle the problem of player-artificial agent cooperation, where we want to improve the robustness of current imitation learning techniques to mimic a player’s gameplay by extending the imitation learning procedure with reinforcement learning.