Innovative Projects Realized

Development of an On-body Sensor Network Using a combination of INS and USID System and its application to ExoLegs™

Bionik Laboratories Inc. has developed ExoLegs™, a battery powered, motor driven, robotic pair of legs intended for use in rehabilitation and mobility enhancement of individuals with paraplegia. ExoLegs represents a technology that improves rehabilitation and recovery of paraplegics and reduces secondary health issues that result from confinement to wheelchairs for extended periods.

The proposed research project will expedite the time-to-market for the ExoLegs, currently in the late stages of the product development cycle. The post-doctoral fellow interns will focus on enhancing the electrical components of the product. The aim is to minimize power consumption of the product while maintaining its reliability and accuracy. Bionik Laboratories will benefit from the expediting of the timeto- market for the product, along with potential intellectual property and know-how generation and recruitment of highly qualified personnel.

Greenville Enterprises Five-Year Strategic Plan

Although it is clear that great opportunities exist for Aboriginal businesses, there is a distinct need for formalized research findings and knowledge dissemination about Aboriginal organizations and the role that they can play in creating sustainable economies. In an attempt to address this research gap research institutions and analysts are building a body of literature that documents the development, growth, and daily operations of some of these successful Aboriginal organizations. The Village of Laxgalts’ap is one of the four Nisga’a communities under the Nisga’a Lisims Government that created Greenville Enterprises Inc. in 2009, an organization focusing on logging, log sorting, log home building, scaling and cedar shake milling. This project will focus on the development of a 5-year comprehensive strategic plan that examines the current strategies of the organization, how business choices for services and products align with current company strategies and goals, maximizing the potential for commercial success of new ventures or products.

Mimicking medial-knee brace gait using PCA and biofeedback

Knee osteoarthritis is a disabling disease affecting millions of people worldwide. Knee braces have been adopted as a treatment strategy to help manage osteoarthritis pain. These braces apply a force to the knee, which, in theory, reduces the joint loads in the knee. They also however change the way people walk, which can also reduce pain. The purpose of this research is to determine whether the positive effects of the knee braces are due to the altered walking patterns, or the force they apply to the knee. If the altered walking patterns are what reduce knee pain, patients with osteoarthritis can potentially reduce treatment cost and avoid wearing a brace. This research is being performed in collaboration with HAS-Motion, who has recently released a product required to perform this research. This project will test the capabilities of this new product, before it is distributed, in a real laboratory environment.

Smartphone-based Real-Time Automatic Image Tagging

Mobile phone, media and entertainment sectors are of critical importance to our economy. With the massive usage of mobile devices (e.g., British Columbia has the highest smartphone penetration among all provinces in Canada) and increasing popularity of smartphone camera applications and mobile social networks, automatic image tagging is crucial for the next-generation mobile social media services. The tag is basically an automatic description for the photo. In this project, we will develop innovative approaches for auto scene understanding and automatic facial expression recognition to facilitate the automatic image tagging process. The industry partner will have access to HQP with relevant expertise and advanced technologies developed by the project. The developed technologies will be important new components of the company’s new Apps and services.

Validation of Android-based NFC technologies as a Platform for Authentication Solutions

Today, a growing number of mobile devices come enabled with Near Field Communications (NFC) “out-of-the-box.” This has opened the door to an explosion of new possibilities for smartphones, such as those running on the Andriod platform. These new NFC capable Android devices could potentially replace RFID technologies, which are widely used in a variety of authentication applications, such as control access cards. However, it is unclear that all such cards can actually be “cloned” on the Android platform, which only offers a limited access to its NFC capabilities. Moreover, the simple act of replacing an insecure RFID access cards with an Android App that is as vulnerable, does not solve the serious security issues that currently plague these wireless technologies. On the road to producing a secure NFC authentication solution, Ubique Technologies first needs to reproduce current solutions in order to ensure backward compatibility, which is an essential barrier – that needs to be eliminated – for market adoption.

Mobile Hearing Tests

This project is to focus on building an application which can be used to perform a hearing test on a mobile device (such as an iPhone or iPad). The intern is to implement a white-label (brand-free and easily reusable) application which can be easily distributed by doctor’s offices and hearing centers with their specific brand and information. The intern will use mathematical techniques to help gather and analyze user information more efficiently in order to provide a fast, accurate assessment of the user’s hearing and direct the user for further diagnosis if necessary. The benefit to the partner organization is the creation of an application which with minimal modification can be marketed to hospitals, hearing centers, and other medical-related fields. In addition the company will gain valuable benefits from working with academic partners such as access to sophisticated analysis and simulation software (such as MATLAB).

Thin Film Thermal Conductivity Sensor

Advancement of a thin film sensors for the characterization of heat transfer of solids, liquids, powders and pastes. 

Modeling and analysis of Inertial filter for Engine exhaust applications

The scope of this project is to model and analyze inertial filters used by combustion engines to facilitate exhaust gas recirculation acting as coarse filtration units. This would help to reduce environmental pollution caused by heavy duty diesel engines. By using Finite Element Analysis model to investigate, the design will incorporate the best ratio among the geometric parameters which will enable the least pressure drop for stipulated flow rate. Lower the pressure drop higher will be the fuel savings. The benefits will be seen as reduced pollution from medium – heavy duty diesel engines which will have a direct impact on the environment with potential fuel savings.

Building Online Support for Parents of Youth and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This project aims to provide crucial and much needed knowledge in the area of "innovative social support resources" for parents of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. To accomplish this, an online parent peer support group, facilitated by experienced  professionals, will be established. operated, and analyzed over a four month period, This expertly mediated network will serve as a forum through which parents can offer mutual support to one another via shared experience and knowledge in this domain. A variety of informative resources will also be provided on the network to enrich the environment of support and to stimulate further discussion. Successful or unsuccessful outcomes herein have the potential to provide a strong foundation through which social support resources of service providers in this milieu (including the Sinneave Family Foundation) could be meaningfully enhanced.

Sequential anomaly detection with labeling costs

In a number of data analytics domains, there is a need for detecting the situations when something outside of the normal conditions is happening. The goal of this project is to develop novel algorithms that learn to distinguish these normal and anomalous patterns through minimal interaction with a human user, while allowing complex data patterns such as time-series data. We further take into account a specific asymmetry of labeling costs that is inherent in the problem. Our proposed methods use prediction with expert advice techniques, adapting them to the structure of the aforementioned problem. We avoide statistical assumptions about the data generating mechanism, while allowing the use of domain knowledge through designing a set of experts used by our algorithms. Our algorithms enhance the effectiveness of Darkhorse Analytics’ anomaly detection system, which is currently based on manual definition of thresholds on specific key values, and also reduce the cost of manual analysis of the data sets by requiring less interaction with human users.

Fugitive lead emissions study for the Trail smelting operation

Teck Metals Ltd. operates one of the world’s largest integrated lead-zinc smelting operations based in Trail, British Columbia. An important part of Teck’s normal day-to-day operations is to carefully track and report on any pollutants generated on site that are released into the environment. The purpose of this internship is to assist their Company in estimating atmospheric emissions of lead particulates from a variety of sources. Our work is based on extending an existing inverse Gaussian plume emissions model where the input to the algorithm is a collection of measurements of particulate material deposited on the ground in the area around the Trail smelter.

Design of a Novel, Low-profile Picture Space Heater

Datec Coatings Corporation has developed a new technology that enables them to print heating elements on various surfaces. One of these is a mica sheet, which is physically very similar to regular cereal box cardboard. By printing an image on another sheet of mica and placing both of these in a frame, it is possible to create a wall-mounted picture that functions as a portable space heater. This design has the potential for numerous advantages over conventional space heaters in areas of safety, aesthetics and space-saving.

The main barrier preventing this from being a successful alternative to conventional space heaters is in the total heat output of the units. It is the goal of this project to design the most efficient and safe wall mounted unit with the highest possible heat output. In addition, the design must be able to be manufactured in Canada, be inexpensive, and aesthetically pleasing.