Co-op

Over the moon: U of T student lands 'dream' placement making next-gen space robots

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 15:40:54 +0000

Over the moon: U of T student lands 'dream' placement making next-gen space robots

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/17/2021 - 11:40

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U of T Engineering student Erin Richardson is spending 16 months at Canadian space engineering firm MDA, where she is working on a new generation of autonomous robots for the forthcoming Lunar Gateway space station (photo courtesy of MDA)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Co-op

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Moon

Space

Undergraduate Students

Undergraduate Education

Erin Richardson was in Grade 9 when she decided she wanted to be an astronaut.

“We had a science unit on outer space, and I remember being completely fascinated by the vast scale of it all,” says the third-year engineering science student in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Thinking about how big the universe is, and how we’re just a tiny speck on a tiny planet, I knew I wanted to be part of exploring it.”

Richardson started following Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on social media and watching videos of his daily life on the International Space Station. She also started reading about aerospace and doing everything she could to break into the industry, including getting her student pilot permit.

It was in a Forbes magazine article about women in STEM that she first heard about Kristen Facciol, a U of T Engineering alumna who had worked as a systems engineer at Canadian space engineering firm MDA before moving on to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). At the time, Facciol was an Engineering Support Lead that provided real-time flight support during on-orbit operations and teaching courses to introduce astronauts and flight controllers to the ISS robotic systems.

Today, Facciol is a flight controller for CSA/NASA.

“I found her contact information and reached out to her,” says Richardson. “She’s been an amazing mentor to me over the last five years. We’re still close friends, and she’s really helped influence my career path.”

With Facciol’s encouragement, Richardson applied to U of T’s engineering science program, eventually choosing the aerospace major. After her first year, she landed a summer research position in the lab of Jonathan Kelly, an assistant professor at the U of T Institute of Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) who works on simulation tools for a robotic mobile manipulator platform.

“Working in Kelly’s lab piqued my interest in robotics as they could be applied in space,” Richardson says. “Researching collaborative manipulation in dynamic environments will push the boundaries of human spaceflight – during spacewalks, astronauts work right alongside robots all the time.”

After her second year, Richardson travelled to Tasmania for a research placement facilitated by EngSci’s ESROP Global program. Working with researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia’s national science agency, Richardson created tools to analyze data collected during scientific mooring deployments, which help researchers learn more about oceans over long periods of time. This work informs the design of next-generation mooring systems which, like space systems, must survive harsh and constrained environments.

Richardson was sitting in a second-year lecture when she heard the news that Canada had joined NASA’s Lunar Gateway project, a new international space station set to be constructed between 2023 and 2026. Unlike the ISS, which currently orbits Earth, the Lunar Gateway will orbit the moon and will serve both as a waypoint for future crewed missions to the lunar surface and as preparation for missions to even more distant worlds, such as Mars.

Energized, Richardson searched for a way to get involved. Her opportunity came in the fall of 2019 when she saw a posting on MDA’s job board. She immediately applied through U of T Engineering’s Professional Experience Year Co-op program, which enables undergraduate students to spend up to 16 months working for leading firms worldwide before returning to finish their degree programs.

Richardson started her placement in May 2020, well into the COVID-19 pandemic. She and her employer quickly adapted.

“I was working from home through the summer, but for my latest project I was able to go on site to operate this robotic arm,” she says.

The robotic arm in question is a model of Dextre, a versatile robot that maintains the International Space Station. Richardson used it as a prototype part for the Canadarm3, which will be installed on Lunar Gateway.

Because the Lunar Gateway will be so far from Earth, Canadarm3 will be designed to execute certain tasks without supervision from a remote control station. Part of Richardson’s job is to create the dataset that will eventually be used to train the artificial intelligence algorithms that will make this possible.

In MDA’s DREAMR lab, Richardson guided the robotic arm through a series of movements and scenarios, with a suite of video cameras tracking its every move. She then tagged each series of images with metadata that will teach the robot whether the movements it saw were desirable ones to emulate, or dangerous ones to avoid.

“We had to capture different lighting conditions and obstacles of various sizes and colours,” she says. “My colleagues pointed out to me that because it’s me deciding which scenarios count as collisions and which ones don’t, the AI that we eventually create will be a reflection of my own brain.”

Apart from the opportunity to contribute to the next generation of space robots, Richardson says she’s enjoyed the chance to apply what she’s learned in her U of T classes, as well as the professional connections she’s made.

“It’s my dream job,” she says. “I use what I learned in engineering design courses every day. I’m treated as a full engineer and a member of the team. The people I work with are extremely supportive and they talk to me about my dreams and goals. I love being surrounded by a team of talented and motivated people – all so passionate about what they do and about advancing space exploration.

“It’s an awesome opportunity for any student.”

U of T student helps find a better way to keep TTC riders informed

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 21:15:39 +0000

U of T student helps find a better way to keep TTC riders informed

noreen.rasbach Wed, 01/31/2018 - 16:15

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Henry Hoàng Tran uses his Faculty of Information specialty in his work for the Toronto Transit Commission (photo by Ha Nguyen)

Topic

Faculty of Information

Graduate Students

As a newcomer to the city, Henry Hoàng Tran quickly figured out some of the many reasons locals love to hate the Toronto Transit Commission. He noticed that the TTC’s wayfinding signs were often confusing, the website was outdated, and information about subway delays was frequently unhelpful.

But instead of taking to social media to gripe about it, he applied to work at the transit commission as a co-op student.

“I wanted to do something for the TTC,” says Tran, who is in the final year of his master's program at the Faculty of Information and specializes in User Experience Design (UXD). At his interview for the eight-month co-op placement with the TTC’s customer experience team, he shared his ideas and landed the job.

When the TTC began 2018 by unveiling redesigned digital display signage, Tran proudly snapped photos of the platform-level screens to send home to his mother in Vietnam. “The whole Toronto is looking at my product,” he texted, referring to the 1.7 million riders who take the TTC everyday.

Tran was part of the team responsible for redesigning the band at the bottom of the screen, which shows information about the next train. While it used to tell commuters nothing more than when they could expect the next train or if it was delayed, it now shows both the line number logo and the final destination as well.

It’s a small step as implementing change in a large organization like the TTC is often slow, but Tran says riders should keep their eyes peeled for more passenger-centred changes down the line. Along with digital signage, the customer experience team looks at improving the TTC’s real time information management processes, including announcements to passengers and the methods used by staff to enter delays into the system. To shape their work, they rely heavily on customer research, such as focus groups and usability testing.

Tran learned in his studies that effective announcements should reduce commuters' “cognitive load” by giving them as much information as they need but not too much or obsolete information. “You want to reduce the stress so that people are not freaking out,” he says. Small things, like making the predicted train arrival times as accurate as possible, can make a big difference.

When his co-op placement ended in December, Tran was asked to stay on at the TTC in a part-time role to work on ongoing projects.

Tran credits Olivier St-Cyr, assistant professor, teaching stream, for his success, emphasizing that before he came to the Faculty of Information, he had no knowledge of UXD. Tran's undergraduate degree was in business, with a specialization in marketing, and his work experience was as a communications specialist at Microsoft in Vietnam. “Thanks to Professor St-Cyr, I was well-prepared for all the stuff we are doing at the TTC,” says Tran, who will graduate this year.

One of his current projects involves the station screens at subway entrances. They show weather and sports but not whether the subway is running. They’re a pet peeve of riders who only discover delays after they’ve paid up.

“We hope in the very near future you’ll be able to see at a glance any disruptions before you pay your fare,” says Tran.

Summer in the city: U of T co-op students creating app for Rouge National Urban Park

lanthierj — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:17:39 +0000

Summer in the city: U of T co-op students creating app for Rouge National Urban Park

lanthierj Fri, 06/17/2016 - 10:17

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(photos by Ken Jones)

Berton Woodward

Author legacy

Berton Woodward

Topic

If you’re hiking in Rouge National Urban Park and you want to know more about your surroundings, wouldn’t you like to be able to pull out your smartphone and get instant, engaging information?

Parks Canada certainly would. So, in May, four U of T Scarborough students began work on a two-year co-op project to create a content-rich app that people can use on visits to Canada’s first national urban park, which will soon officially encompass Rouge Park near UTSC.

“We are using technology as a bridge to experience nature,” says Kaitlyn Chow, a master’s student in environmental science who will be a content curator/creator on the project for the next eight months. “We’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming. The overall theme is the idea of stories – there is a long, rich history in the park and we want to make it easy for people to digest.”

Parks Canada has a formal partnership with U of T Scarborough and has hired a total of 23 co-op students over the past three summers. The app project grew out of discussions between Parks Canada officials and Gray Graffam, director of The Hub, UTSC’s centre for innovation and entrepreneurship.

“They wanted to develop mobile technology for the Rouge National Urban Park, and we saw our co-op program as a natural way to do this,” says Graffam. He will oversee the project at The Hub, and the app will be a joint intellectual property with the database housed at UTSC.

Chow is working with her fellow environmental science master’s student, Winston Lee, in content creation, and two computer science undergrads, Derek Etherton and Alexander Cavanagh, on the tech side. All four have been asked to take regular hikes in the park to get to know it.

“This is a great opportunity for our students to work on a new endeavour and gain an understanding of something happening in our own backyard,” says Dallas Boyer, manager, operations, arts and science co-op. “And it shows the interdisciplinary nature of our areas of study – computer science students working with environmental science students. They will learn from each other.”

The app will also grow with the park, as it expands to its full size of 79.1 sq km, including Rouge Park – some 50 times the size of High Park and located within easy reach of public transit. The finished park will stretch from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine, including parts of Toronto, Markham, Pickering and Uxbridge.

“When it is complete, it will be the largest and best protected urban park in North America,” says Omar McDadi, External Relations Manager for Rouge National Urban Park. “It will have 1,700 species of plants and animals, one of the most biologically diverse places in Canada. The app will help people learn about the wildlife and plant life, but there’s so much more to the story as well. There is an agricultural community with working farms dating back to 1799, as well as 10,000 years of human history.”

Not surprisingly, Chow says the first big challenge has been how to narrow the scope of the app. Etherton adds that the team must deal with the varying levels of signal in the park and decide how much information to build into the app versus download during use.

Meanwhile, they are among the few employees happy to hear their supervisors say, “Take a hike.”

Co-op

Over the moon: U of T student lands 'dream' placement making next-gen space robots

U of T student helps find a better way to keep TTC riders informed

Read more about the Master's of Information co-op option

Summer in the city: U of T co-op students creating app for Rouge National Urban Park