Innovative Projects Realized

Quality Assurance and Safety Tools for Emerging Drone Technologies

Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) designs and operates high performance Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS) to deliver payloads between depots and warehouses. Safety and quality assurance (QA) play an integral role in assuring that drone technology is accepted by the public, consumers, and the Canadian government. The demand for more advanced testing on both the drone hardware and software must be thoroughly carried out to achieve such acceptance. The proposed research project focuses on meeting this demand by investigating both the physical safety and control system quality of the drone. This project will investigate the use of a drone parachute recovery system (PRS) used in the event of in-flight failure of the drone as well as new QA tools to improve the reliability and safety of drones at the manufacturing stage.

Autonomous next generation wireless communication network optimization

Since the mid 1980s, moving access points, such as Wi-Fi, closer to network devices has been the largest contributer to improved data rates and this trend continues, but its scope is more difficult for rural internet service providers. The second technique is from the choice of the assigned spectrum and how this choice relates to other techniques to improve data rates. The third technique is from a combination of advanced signal processing techniques, involving antennas, beamforming, the allocation of available bandwidth and sampling the radio channels. Furthermore, the sampling of the radio channels is now possible by the use of UAVs which can be used for both planning and assessment of real-time operations.

A Usability Study of Teacher Help: Classroom Management

The goal of the proposed research project is to evaluate the usability of a new module for an existing eLearning program for classroom teachers called Teacher Help. The new module is designed to provide training in evidence-based classroom management strategies to decrease disruptive classroom behaviour. Participants will be classroom teachers (n =20) and other stakeholders (e.g., school psychologists, parents, behaviour specialists; n = 20), who will access the program and rate the usability of the module after completing each of the six sessions in the new module, and at the end of the program. Participants will be rating the module using a questionnaire based on Morville’s User Experience Framework, which will assess their perception of the module’s accessibility, credibility, desirability, findability, usability, usefulness, and value. The partner organization will benefit from the proposed project’s novelty and by the elucidation of stakeholder perceptions of behavioural eLearning programs for teachers.

Enhancing horticultural production through carbon dioxide enrichment and heat recovery from municipal organics composting

Vertical farming is an innovative urban agricultural practice that can efficiently use resources to supply food for communities, while high energy cost is becoming an economic bottleneck to long-term development and growth of the technology. The potential exists to capture and take advantage of by-products generated from the biological decay of the organics during the composting process, including CO2 gas and heat. This project is framed within the concept of utilizing process by-products generated during the composting of source separated organics to achieve CO2 enrichment and heat recovery in modular vertical farming systems. This project will offer opportunities for reducing the carbon footprint, better resource management, and opportunities for energy savings in Canada.

Innovating a crop assessment system using a real-time, hardware-based drone image processing system to support on-the-spot decision in agriculture

Agricultural producers are concerned about producing food, increasing productivity, and making sustainability, while drones along with governments, technology leaders, and industry are playing an important role as a part of solution of this [9]. This drone imagery is for farmers so that, they can fly their fields, and not only pinpoint issues such as, irrigation leaks, leaf color variation or pest, but also highlight where these issues are occurring. But the image processing time is often too late to remedy that solution. Accordingly, actionable intelligence can produce crop health maps for farmers by measuring the amount of biomass or live green vegetation in the crops using the Normalized Differentiation Vegetation Index (NDVI) [10]. Therefore, by combining precision agriculture technology with information and communication technologies, it is possible to provide real-time farm monitoring and faster sensor data processing to the farmers for better farm management as well as increasing food productivity.

Beyond processing waste of sea cucumber: cosmeceutical potential of North Atlantic sea cucumber (Cucumaria frondosa)

Orange-footed sea cucumber (Cucumaria frondosa) is the most common sea cucumber found in the North Atlantic Ocean. This species is mainly fished for its edible body wall and other remaining body parts are discarded as processing waste. However, all the body parts are rich in protein and production of protein hydrolysates is identified as an efficient method to upgrade the by-products. The protein hydrolysates and peptides so produced exhibit excellent functional and biological properties. These properties show great potential for utilizing as functional ingredients in the cosmetic industry. The cosmetic industry’s current interest is moving towards natural cosmetics with added health benefits, particularly, it has become the emerging trend in skincare products. Therefore, proper incorporation of sea cucumber biologically active molecules into cosmetic products will enhance the full utilization of Atlantic sea cucumber while promoting skin health.

Reconfigurable Legged Robot for Structural Inspection with Confined Spaces

This project is motivated by the demands for automation of industrial structure inspection. An autonomous re-configurable robot system is proposed to facilitate the inspection of structures with confined spaces, like airframes or ship hulls. The robot will be able to realize various types of legged locomotion by means of configuration changes. The general objective of this project is to develop a legged robot system that is fully autonomous and adaptable to the structures under operation. We believe that the proposed system will have significant potentials for commercial applications as a lot of industries are calling for an autonomous robotic inspection. Therefore, the partner organizations are driving new technology in Canada.

Infra-Climate Hybrid Bridge Design System

Integral Abutment Bridges (IABs) are unique structures in the sense that they are rigid compared to typical bridges that have bearing connections. Bridges are designed to withstand forces sourcing from its own weight and ongoing traffic as well as temperature forces. As the temperature varies (cyclic in nature), the bridge experiences contraction and expansion forces that result in varying internal stresses within the structure that causes the bridge to wear. As the effects of global warming include an increase in the earth’s temperature, the extent that the bridge moves increases, thus increasing the pressure in the bridge. To visualize how much these bridges are affected, a software simulation is used to help predict their behavior. The developed system is of great importance to all departments of transportation in Canada and worldwide and to practicing engineers who are actively involved in the design and management of IABs.

Repurposing poultry industry wastes to generate high value microbial metabolites for plant growth promotion

The global population is projected to rise from about 7.2 billion in 2014 to 9.6 billion people in 2050 as predicted by the World Resources Institute. With a rapid growth of world’s population, there is a dire need for food. To cope with this ever-increasing demand for food, the use of large amounts of fertilizers, chemical pesticides and antimicrobial agents are being adopted. Although the use of agrochemicals increased plant productivity, they come at the cost of damage to the environment, agro-ecosystems and living organisms facing harmful residual effects. A more sustainable, environmentally conscious soil amendment to use as a replacement to synthetic chemicals is a bio-stimulant. Poultry industry waste consists of, blood, feathers and other body parts which cannot be sold. Poultry waste can be converted to protein hydrolysate, which will be used as a medium to grow bacteria which synthesize metabolite biostimulants. These biostimulants enhance seed germination, plant growth, nutrition uptake, and tolerance to stress conditions. The partner organization will train the graduate and post-graduate researchers to be entrepreneurs, thus encouraging new companies to be established in the region.

Modular Energy Storage and Control Systems

The excessive burning of fossil fuels into our atmosphere is causing our climate to change rapidly. This change in climate will have detrimental effects on home security, crop yield, energy security, and water scarcity. Many geopolitical and social pressures are present to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As of now over 70% of electricity in Nova Scotia is being generated by fossil fuels, more specifically over 50% of all electricity in Nova Scotia is coming from coal fire power-plants, one of the heaviest GHG emitting sources of energy. Renewable energy is emerging as the best solution to mitigate the amount of fossil fuels burned for production of electricity. Throughout the last few decades Nova Scotia has implemented a variety of renewable, most abundantly wind from wind turbines. Nova Scotia has ideal conditions for wind generation; however, the weather and environmental patterns are very difficult to predict which lead to high intermittency in generation of wind.

Due to the intermittency or renewables, energy generation does not always coincide with energy consumption. Thus, with an energy mix heavily favoring renewables it is necessary to use energy storage.

Harnessing the potential of land-based Aquaculture by-productsthrough the use of aerobic bioreactor technology

The overall project goal is the adoption of ensiling and aerobic bioreactor system used within recirculating aquaculture systems, a developing industry within aquaculture. RAS, produce waste streams incorporating various fish wastes. Some RAS operations integrate fish processing facilities onsite, further increasing waste products. Currently waste products form these systems are disposed of through outside contractors at cost. Through ensiling and aerobic processing, the overall aim is to bring control of waste processing in-house and create additional revenue stream from the waste. While the technology is proven, the adoption of the technology from a financial, operational and technical acceptance perspective is yet to be explored, this project aims to answer the question of whether such technology would be accepted by RES operators. This project aims to achieve this through conducting market research with the RES industry and other stakeholders as well as conducting a waste analysis to understand waste flow throughs from individual operations, through generalized data obtained through interviews and through an aon-site evaluation of a Nova Scotia RES operator.

Forecasting Single Detached Residential Heat Demand byMonitoring Central Thermostat Response to Weather Conditions

This research seeks to find a method of predicting how much heating is required to maintain comfort in homes. By collecting information such as outside weather conditions and inside temperatures along with thermostat ontime, a method of predicting the needed heat for the home will be determined. Research involves installing devices in homes that record this information which will then reported to the researcher to create a mathematical representation of how unique home heating systems respond to outside conditions. This research would lead to the development of control devices that will reduce heating costs for homeowners while maintaining comfort, especially in homes that use multiple heating devices or take advantage of time-of-day power rates.