Innovative Projects Realized

Towards a Foundation Model for Scene Understanding in Autonomous Driving

Autonomous vehicles operating at Level 4 autonomy require a comprehensive understanding of their current driving situation and context. While current systems rely mainly on perceptual information such as video, lidar, and radar, they often lack the necessary understanding of the vehicle’s concrete situation. To address this gap, this research project aims to develop a foundational model for scene understanding in the context of autonomous driving. The goal is to use this trained model as an additional input for downstream tasks, which require a nuanced understanding of the vehicle’s current driving scene, such as motion prediction and planning. We will leverage an existing Knowledge Graph, based on the public nuScenes dataset, which represents individual driving scenes, including the agents and objects present, as well as the relationships among them and information from map data. The main task is to train and evaluate foundational models based on a suitable deep learning architecture, such as a Transformer with multi-headed self-attention, and different scene representations as input. We plan to publish the results in a well-regarded conference in the field to contribute to the growing body of knowledge in autonomous driving research.

La productivité en tourisme, hôtellerie et restauration au Québec

Le concept de productivité est un concept relativement simple à comprendre dans un contexte industriel c.-à-d. le nombre d’unités produites par employé. Dans un contexte touristique (tourisme, hôtellerie, restauration, attrait), la notion de productivité et de sa mesure est plus difficile à faire compte tenu de l’aspect intangible, de cocréation avec les visiteurs des expériences offertes.
La mesure classique de la productivité manufacturière diffère de la productivité mesurée pour des services. Plusieurs auteurs (Grönroos & Ojasalo, 2004; Joppe & Li, 2014) ont déjà émis les idées fondamentales à propos du concept de la productivité en service.
Le tourisme étant un aggloméra d’industrie de service, la productivité générale comprend une quantité de variables importante pour pouvoir commencer à comprendre l’efficacité relative de l’industrie. Par exemple, dans le but d’isoler la performance de l’industrie touristique, la performance du secteur hôtelier pourrait être considérée comme étant le seul indicateur.

Predictive Maintenance with AI : anomaly detection

During this internship, the student will participate in the AI model development of the anomaly detection
engine for predictive maintenance.

Développement de méthodes avancées en optimisation non-linéaire sous contraintes appliquées pour la prévision de la demande en électricité

Le projet vise à moderniser et améliorer les outils numériques utilisés par Hydro-Québec pour prévoir la demande en électricité au Québec et mettre en oeuvre des stratégies d’autocorrection. Les développements attendus per-mettront d’augmenter la capacité de maintenance et d’amélioration de ces outils par Hydro-Québec, et de les rendre plus efficaces. Hydro-Québec sera ainsi plus à même de faire face aux changements dans la consomma-tion d’électricité au Québec et à ses frontières, dus aux changements climatiques, économiques, et d’habitudes de vie. De plus, le projet permettra de contribuer aux méthodes de calibration de modèles sous contraintes, de plus en plus présents en optimisation.

Psychoeducation for family members of individuals experiencing psychosis

The project aims to analyze the existing psychoeducational materials that exist for individuals who have experienced psychosis and their families. A focus group will be developed to explore what skills or knowledge might support family members of individuals who are experiencing or have experienced psychosis. Using this focus group, we will develop educational materials with information that is identified as necessary for family members to know to support individuals with psychosis. These materials will serve the dual purpose of educating family members about the condition and, in so doing, reduce stigma. Stigma reduction and increased social support are expected to improve experiences and outcomes of individuals with psychosis. These materials could be further used to develop materials for other conditions, such as personality disorders, or to educate other groups, such as employers.

Water chemistry, vegetation, and spatial variables affecting aquatic insect biodiversity in Edmonton stormwater management facilities, as compared to wetlands across Alberta, Canada

Urban stormwater ponds present an opportunity for aquatic biodiversity conservation within cities. However, stormwater ponds receive city runoff and other effects of urbanization, which may mean that only certain species can live in them. A landscape-scale comparison of urban and rural pond biodiversity has not been performed in Canada. We will sample aquatic insect biodiversity and measure environmental variables in 35 Edmonton stormwater ponds, and test what variables explain insect biodiversity measures. We will then use Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute data for the same taxa from 1168 ponds across Alberta to analyze in what ways Edmonton’s urban ponds are similar to ponds across the province, in terms of both environmental variables and aquatic insect species composition. From this we will develop urban pond management recommendations to increase aquatic insect biodiversity, and assess the conservation value of Edmonton’s stormwater ponds in the context of aquatic insect biodiversity across the broader landscape.

Shallow geothermal systems evaluation for Bow Valley municipalities

Energy use in buildings is among the largest energy users, accounting for about 13% of the total energy use and over 12% of the total CO2 Omissions in 2020 in Canada. The buildings sector is viewed as one with the potential for significant CO2 emission reductions by transitioning from the current fossil fuelled energy systems to new green forms of energy production. Among the technologies with the potential to provide heating and cooling, high efficiently with minimum emissions, the shallow geothermal (geo-exchange) systems with the ground source heat pump technology at its core is a promising avenue for development. This project aims to deliver this technology feasibility assessment for an average home in Bow Valley area, taking into account uniqueness of the area’s geographical location, geological setting, climate conditions and building layouts.

Conception pour manufacturier additif et analyse

Conception spécifique de pièces ou d’assemblable pour la fabrication additive pour des machines automatisées d’emballage et analyse poussés de propriétés physiques de matériaux granulaires.

Creating Brand UX

The convenience of online shopping is winning-out over the desire to shop local. At Fitzba.com, we are making local shopping as convenient as online.
Our product development team is in a race to achieve product-market fit. But the other side of having a great product is telling people about it. The Digital Marketing intern and the Brand UX intern will work directly with the CEO to plan and execute brand strategy.

Building Community Resiliency: Creating culturally safe resource for Indigenous communities

The NB FASD Centre of Excellence is a diagnostic clinic providing services to New Brunswick province. We provide education to family members of those who live with FASD and the professionals who work with them and provide lifelong intervention and support for our clients. We are also responsible for educating the province on FASD prevention. We will be conducting a pilot study with selected First Nations healthcare practitioners and the wider community healthcare practitioners to evaluate if an alcohol-use awareness workbook is culturally safe to use with clients. This workbook focuses on an evidence-based approach to change and recovery, evidence-based skillful practices, and problem alcohol use with co-occurring disorders.

This project will help to address challenges by creating culturally relevant materials so that we can provide education to First Nation communities that are reflective of their needs. These materials will also help us to strengthen our relationship with the communities in which we provide services. This project will benefit the Regional Steering Committee and GFSI by providing additional support resources for communities and supporting community resiliency efforts.

Greater Fredericton Social Innovation’s (GFSI) mandate is to provide social planning to advance comprehensive community strategies guided by research, analysis, and community-defined goals.

Fredericton Junction: Building Rural Community Healthcare Capacity

Tri-County Healthcare PharmaChoice is in Fredericton Junction. This pharmacy serves a local region with a population of approximately 3200 people. Along with the Fredericton Junction Health Centre, Tri-County Healthcare PharmaChoice provides healthcare services to the villages of Fredericton Junction, Tracy, and the surrounding rural areas. To help build continuity for this community, this project aims to create an entry point for students who are interested in the field of healthcare which will in turn create further capacity for rural healthcare in New Brunswick. This project will also create awareness of small and medium business management in rural areas for non-business students and provide a platform for students to step up in community leadership roles.

Vers l’implantation d’un système de consigne de contenants pour plats et boissons pour emporter : étude de cas dans la Ville Prévost

Cette recherche porte sur l’implantation d’un système de consigne et réutilisation de contenant pour emporter
auprès des commerçants de la Ville de Prévost. Elle a pour but de concevoir une méthode pour changer des
comportements/habitudes visant le zéro déchet par des approches et outils innovants comme la cocréation et le
travail de collaboration entre différentes parties prenantes, de documenter un exemple probant. Par l’exemple de
la Ville de Prévost comme ambassadrice, cette recherche vise à influencer les commerçants de restauration à
s’investir dans l’économie circulaire avec le zéro déchet ainsi que les autres municipalités à tendre vers de
nouvelles pratiques de politiques municipales.