Institute for Aerospace Studies

Research and Innovation

Self-Driving Cars

Technology

Newly released data from a collaboration between the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and Scale AI will help train future self-driving cars to handle the challenges of winter driving.

Along with their teams, Steven Waslander, an associate professor at U of T's Institute for Aerospace Studies in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Krzysztof Czarnecki, a professor at the University of Waterloo, this week unveiled the Canadian Adverse Driving Conditions dataset.

Based on actual scans of icy, snow-covered Canadian roads, the dataset acts as a virtual training course for the computer algorithms that enable cars to drive themselves.

“There are lots of great training datasets out there already, but they were collected on sunny, summer days,” says Waslander. “If you take algorithms trained on those datasets and try to use them in adverse conditions, they tend to get confused. They can misclassify objects – such as pedestrians and other vehicles – or even miss them entirely, all because of the changes in sensor data caused by snowfall.”

To tackle this challenge, the two professors decided to create a dataset that would capture what Waslander describes as “some of the worst conditions that you might see while trying to drive in Canada.”

“We want to engage the research community to generate new ideas and enable innovation,” says Czarnecki. “This is how you can solve really hard problems, the problems that are just too big for anyone to solve on their own.”

The dataset was created with the Autonomoose, a Lincoln MKZ hybrid that has been equipped with a full suite of sensors, including eight onboard cameras, a lidar (light detection and ranging) scanner and a GPS tracker. Waslander and Czarnecki developed the vehicle as a test bed for self-driving software, but the Autonomoose also has a recording mode that captures data at a rate of 10 images or scans per second.

Over the past two winters, the teams have taken the Autonomoose around southwestern Ontario, recording data from more than 1,000 kilometres of driving. Of this, approximately 33 kilometres in harsh, snowy conditions were selected to form the basis of the dataset.

The teams partnered with Scale AI, a San Francisco-based AI infrastructure company, to label the data. Through a combination of computer and human image recognition, Scale AI tagged more than 178,000 instances of passing vehicles and more than 83,000 instances of pedestrians, along with many other objects.

“Data is a critical bottleneck in current machine learning research,” said Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale. “Without reliable, high-quality data that captures the reality of driving in winter, it simply won’t be possible to build self-driving systems that work safely in these environments.”

Finally, the teams conducted statistical analysis, processing and validation, placing the data into a format that can be parsed by currently available software. The result: a virtual environment that represents Canadian winter driving at its finest.

In addition to the dataset, the teams have provided full documentation and support tools in GitHub, and a scientific article posted publicly on arXiv. All are open-access, available free of charge to researchers. (An additional license is required to use them for the development of commercial products.)

“We’re hoping that both industry and academia go nuts with it,” says Waslander. “We want the world to be working on driving everywhere, and bad weather is a condition that is going to happen. We don’t want Canada to be 10 or 15 years behind simply because conditions can be a bit tougher up here.”

Waslander and his team will also be making extensive use of the data in their future work.

“In my lab, we’re building up a strong research program trying to resolve the issues around winter driving perception,” he says. “We hope that the techniques we develop to locate and track objects in adverse weather will eventually be incorporated into future autonomous vehicle software packages around the world, making them safer for everyone.”

U of T aerospace expert on investigation into fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 04:00:00 +0000

U of T aerospace expert on investigation into fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash

geoff.vendeville Tue, 03/12/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

Debris of the crashed airplane of Ethiopian Airlines, near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (photo by Michael Tewelde/AFP/Getty Images)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Global

Investigators are just beginning to gather evidence to understand the causes of the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people on board, including 18 Canadians. It was the second Boeing 737 Max 8 – the latest version of Boeing’s best-selling aircraft series – involved in a deadly accident in just over four months. A Lion Air 737 Max 8 crashed in October killing 189 people.

On Wednesday, Canada joined Germany, France, Britain, China and dozen of other countries that have either grounded or banned Boeing 737 Max 8s as a precaution.

On Monday, before Canada's decision to ground the 737 Max 8s, U of T News spoke to Craig Steeves , a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, about what we know about the crash and how investigators piece together the causes of an accident.

How unusual is this, two of the same type of aircraft – Boeing 737 Max 8s – crashing in the space of four months?

It's certainly surprising. There's some suspicion about why the Lion Air aircraft crashed. It doesn’t seem that anybody has any idea yet why the Ethiopian Airlines one crashed.
In the Lion Air crash, what may have happened – and this isn’t conclusive yet – is that the angle of attack sensor stopped working and led to a cascade of problems.

What does that mean?

If a plane is flying perfectly level with respect to the incoming air, that’s zero angle of attack. To get lift, planes always have to fly at some angle of attack, tilted up slightly with respect to airflow. Increasing the angle of attack increases lift.

There's an angle that's not very large – 15 to 20 degrees – where the wings no longer generate more lift with higher angle of attack. That’s called stalling and it's bad. Several airplanes have crashed because they stalled. Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo and Air France 477 over the Atlantic Ocean, for example. In both cases, the angle of attack was too high and the aircraft stalled, but the pilots were still trying to increase the angle of attack more. Reflexively, if you want to go up, you point the aircraft up. But if the aircraft has stalled, pointing it up is not going to help. What you have to do is point the aircraft down, gain speed and get control of the aircraft again. Boeing has integrated a new system into the 737 Max that does this automatically.

So what are experts' suspicions about the Lion Air crash?

These have been reported in the New York Times and the Guardian, and probably elsewhere. The suspicion is that the angle of attack sensor was faulty. It was incorrectly detecting an angle of attack that was too high and hence the automatic system reacted by trying to push the aircraft nose down when the aircraft was actually flying normally. The automatic system kept pointing the aircraft down and the pilot eventually lost control. At least, that is the current theory.

This automatic stall prevention system is integrated into an automatic system for trim control. For the pilot to turn this new system off they just have to turn off trim control. It's easy to do if the pilot knows that this is the cause of the problem.

Considering the suspicions about Lion Air, every 737 pilot in the world now knows that if the flight computer appears to be trying to crash the plane, turn off the trim control. Boeing sent out a notice reminding pilots of this. So it would be very hard to imagine the same thing happening again. Still, it's possible; we simply don't know yet.

What do we know about the Ethiopian Airlines crash?

We hardly know anything. There are eyewitness reports that are contradictory. One eyewitness says the plane was on fire when it crashed. One eyewitness says it was not.

What will crash investigators be looking for at this stage?

The first thing they'll do is get as much perishable evidence as possible: statements from eyewitnesses, evidence from air traffic control, any radar plots that might exist.

The second thing they'll get is physical evidence on the ground. If it's a mechanical failure, you can often find the part of the aircraft that failed, eventually. If there was fire on board the aircraft, which can be catastrophic, investigators might be able to find evidence of that.

The aircraft apparently was on fire on the ground. It was just taking off so there was a lot of fuel on board, so this may make collecting physical evidence more difficult. But that's the kind of thing that an investigator would look for.

The next thing are the flight recorders. The data recorder and the voice recorder.

The black boxes?

They're orange actually, but they get called black boxes. They're becoming more and more sophisticated and they record more things now. So it's possible to get a lot of information from them.

There aren't a lot of maintenance records for this aircraft, I suppose, because it's so new, but certainly an investigator would look at that too. They would also probably interview people who knew the pilot.

The breadth of possible causes of crashes is enormous. In any crash that is related exclusively or primarily to the aircraft itself and what happened on board, a series of things have to interact in order to make that crash happen. It would very rarely be just one or even two things.

How long before we have answers?

Sometimes never. For the Malaysian 777 that crashed in the Indian Ocean, flight 370, we still don't know why that happened.

Sometimes it can take a couple of years. If a plane is lost at sea it can take a very long time to establish what happened. In such a case even recovering the data recorders can take a long time. If there's dramatic destruction when the plane crashes on the ground – a high-speed crash and then fire – it can take a long time to piece together all the physical wreckage and figure out what happened. So, generally, many months or years before there is enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion.

Some countries and airlines have decided to ground Boeing 737 MAX 8s. Canada and the U.S. so far have not. Why is that?

That's really hard to know. One thing to remember is that the aerospace and the aircraft industries are probably the most political industries in the world. There could be a lot of considerations that are not obviously safety-related that we would not know about.

Given that two brand new aircraft were involved in broadly similar crashes in four months, it is possible to make a prudential argument for safety, saying that they have to be grounded until we know what's happened. The current evidence, though, seems to be very limited, and one could just as easily argue that we don't have any reason to ground these aircraft.

Tell me about this aircraft series.

The 737 has been around since the late 1960s. If you look up and see an aircraft flying overhead, it's probably either a 737 or an A320. They absolutely dominate commercial aviation because nearly all the two- to five-hour flights are flown with these planes, so that covers most flights that do not cross an ocean.

The more glamorous planes like the 787 or A380 are long-haul only.

It's hard to know exactly what are the motivations of an aircraft manufacturer releasing a new plane, but the 737 Max could be seen as a response to the A320neo, and both of them may have been intended as a response to the Bombardier CSeries. The CSeries is a very, very efficient aircraft.

Neither Boeing nor Airbus wanted Bombardier poaching their customers. Airbus improved the A320. “Neo” stands for new engine option. They put on a new engine, a geared turbofan, which is considerably more efficient than traditional engines. Boeing had to respond to this to remain competitive in this hugely important sector of the aviation market. They changed the engine on the 737 and improved the aerodynamics. Both Airbus and Boeing were aiming for better fuel efficiency and lower operating costs.

From an engineering perspective, what are the challenges when you re-engine an existing aircraft?

Most new engines have very high bypass ratios. That means a lot less air goes through the core of the engine, where the fuel is burnt, relative to the amount of air that's going through the engine in total. This enables a quieter and more fuel efficient engine. But the engine has to be bigger.

If you look at a picture of a 747 from 1969 the engines look tiny. If you look at a new 747 now, the engines are huge in comparison. That's not because they're more powerful, but because they have a high bypass ratio.

For a bigger engine, the most obvious external change necessary is longer landing gear to fit the engines under the wings, but the larger engines also lead to changes in aerodynamics and handling, so these must be accounted for as well.

What do these events mean for Boeing?

Regardless of what turns out to be the cause, it is bad news. Most importantly, a lot of people were killed, which is a tragedy.

Boeing's reputation will inevitably be hurt because these are brand new planes that are crashing. Plus, if regulators start grounding these airplanes, it's going to be a big problem for airlines. And if it's a problem for airlines it's a problem for Boeing.

In the medium-term it might affect their sales, although this will still be an enormously popular aircraft. But there are a lot of issues here: safety-related, aviation-related, regulatory and political. Untying all those things is really tricky.

These U of T experts in AI want to teach you how to program a self-driving car

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 30 Jan 2019 14:43:31 +0000

These U of T experts in AI want to teach you how to program a self-driving car

noreen.rasbach Wed, 01/30/2019 - 09:43

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Jonathan Kelly and Steven Waslander are the instructors behind a new set of online courses on programming self-driving cars (image courtesy of Coursera)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Autonomous Vehicles

Two experts in autonomous vehicles from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have partnered with Coursera to offer a four-course specialization in self-driving cars.

“The interest in autonomous driving is exploding,” says Steven Waslander, an associate professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS).

“The investments have been phenomenal – every student I have trained in this area has had multiple job offers. There is a massive opportunity to contribute to this domain.”

Jonathan Kelly, an assistant professor at UTIAS, points out that self-driving cars have the potential to increase road safety, lead to more efficient use of roadways and vehicles, and even reduce pollution.

“We want to see this industry come to fruition,” says Kelly. “The Coursera platform enables us to reach as big an audience as possible.”

The specialization is aimed at learners who already have some engineering experience, including upper-year undergraduates, as well as graduates looking to upgrade their qualifications or enter a new field.

Through online video lectures, programming exercises and open-source simulation software, students will learn how to assemble the full software stack required to define the operations of an autonomous vehicle.

By the end of the first course, Waslander says students will have taught a virtual car to drive itself around a simulated racetrack. “We want to get people up and running quickly, giving them a broad sweep of every aspect of self-driving car development – how you process the data from sensors, estimate the car’s location, plan its next move and issue commands to drive the wheels,” he says.

That may sound straightforward, but both Waslander and Kelly caution that applying these principles in the uncontrolled environment of real-world driving is incredibly complex.

“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more challenging engineering problem than designing robust self-driving cars,” says Kelly. “But that challenge is very exciting. It forces you to think about new ways of doing things. And the more people we have doing it, the greater our chances of success.”

“Our courses are really meant as a starting point,” says Waslander. “They’ll get you into this world, but there are many ways that you can deepen your knowledge and experience from there.”

The first of the four courses, Introduction to Self-Driving Cars, is available now on the Coursera platform. Three others, to be launched in the coming weeks, include:

State Estimation and Localization for Self-Driving Cars
Visual Perception for Self-Driving
Motion Planning for Self-Driving

“Self-driving cars will reshape our cities and our lives, in the process creating tens of thousands of new jobs for those who have the right skills,” says Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. “We’re excited to partner with the University of Toronto, a top-ranked leader in autonomous vehicle research, to train the next generation of engineers who will bring safe, autonomous vehicles to public roads.”

To develop the courses, Waslander and Kelly drew on more than 30 years of combined experience in autonomous robotics research.

As a graduate student, Waslander worked on some of the first quadcopter aerial robots, programming them to navigate challenges without human intervention. Eventually, he moved on to ground-based vehicles such as the Autonomoose, an autonomous car that drove more than 100 kilometres on public roads in Ontario last summer.

Kelly has focused his research on autonomous robotic systems for a wide range of tasks, from space exploration to elder care. He and his team have also collaborated with a local industrial partner to develop a low-cost retrofit for electric wheelchairs that automates complex tasks, such as navigating doorways or docking behind a desk.

Kelly and Waslander are both excited by the chance to share their knowledge with a broader audience.

“In a couple of years, I would love to see a montage of the people who have completed this course talking about the impact they are having in their jobs,” says Kelly. “There are a lot of challenges to address, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to get more people involved in addressing them.”

Low-cost, high-efficiency nanosatellites invented at U of T catch a rare stellar event

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 18:01:42 +0000

Low-cost, high-efficiency nanosatellites invented at U of T catch a rare stellar event

noreen.rasbach Fri, 01/18/2019 - 13:01

Cutline

Artist’s rendering of the outburst of a nova (K. Ulaczyk, Warsaw University Observatory)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Global

On March 22, Rainer Kuschnig of the Graz University of Technology in Austria was doing his daily check of the nanosatellites in the BRITE Constellation Project – a Canada-Austria-Poland collaboration – when something caught his eye. What seemed to be a very bright star, one which had not been there the day before, appeared on one of his screens.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” wrote Kuschnig to the 12-member BRITE team, which includes Slavek Rucinski, professor emeritus in the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto and the man responsible for inventing the nanosatellites that spotted the phenomenon.

The star was subsequently identified as a nova, a massive explosion that occurs when one small, dense star acquires mass from another closely located star until the overload results in a violent burst of light and energy.

Only five to 10 novas are observed every year, making them a rare occurrence highly sought after by astronomers.

But this nova in particular was unique for two reasons. First, it was caught much sooner than usual. The early stages of a nova are often observed with insufficient frequency and accuracy because “we simply don’t know where to look," says Rucinski.

“The sky is so big. It just so happens that we were observing this field when the nova exploded. But this is not done by any automatic processes – we have a person who looks at fresh results as they come in, and he recognized something unusual. It’s a combination of luck and human participation.”

Second, the BRITE team realized just how exceptionally good Rucinski’s equipment was. His nanosatellites – weighing between one and 10 kilograms, compared to the 1,000-plus kilogram weight of regular-sized research satellites – were initially built with budgetary constraint in mind. They were “cheap to launch and cheap to develop,” says Rucinski (pictured left).

Intended only for “extremely simple things, like measuring the density of the upper ionosphere,” the nanosatellites have now revealed their extremely high versatility and flexibility through this recent unexpected discovery.

When Rucinski first began to consider the potential of nanosatellites in the late 1990s, very small satellites – under 100 kilograms – were a rarity.

But he and Robert Zee, the director of the Space Flight Laboratory at U of T’s Institute of Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), were envisioning something new and unprecedented in the world of astronomy: a small, lightweight satellite that could focus exclusively on massive stars with very high luminosity – “the brightest and rarest stars in the sky," he says.

This initiative followed another Canadian success, the small satellite MOST (a microsatellite with a mass of 70 kg), which Rucinski proposed to the Canadian Space Agency together with Kieran Carroll and was operated from 2003 to 2014.

Massive stars are among the least understood, and are “very, very important,” says Rucinski, “because they produce heavy elements, the material of which we are made. Solid things, our bodies, our products, everything, it’s all made up of this little leftover ‘stuff’ from massive stars.” So this research is key to understanding the very building blocks of our world.

Rucinski and the BRITE team have opened up a new domain of miniature, low-cost spacecraft – BRITE nanosatellites that cost under $2 million each, much lower than the hundreds of millions it costs to build and launch full-sized satellites. These nanosatellites boast unprecedented precision that can explore the minute structure, variations and instabilities of bright stars, a key aspect of understanding the materiality of the world around us, he says.

BRITE originated as an idea in Canada, with Rucinski an early founder and key contributor, but its first satellites were funded by the University of Vienna in 2006. Poland joined in 2009 with funding from the Copernicus Astronomical Centre in Warsaw. Funding for the Canadian complement of the project was added in 2011. The nanosatellites were initially built by UTIAS and then duplicated in Austria and Poland.

The BRITE team is working on a full publication about their discovery, to be published sometime in the next year.

A better way to fly? U of T and UBC researchers study birds and their wings

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 21:05:11 +0000

A better way to fly? U of T and UBC researchers study birds and their wings

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/07/2019 - 16:05

Cutline

A collaboration between U of T professor Philippe Lavoie and zoologists at UBC found gulls are able to transition across a broad range of wing shapes to stabilize glide (photo by Christina Harvey)

Liz Do

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

UTIAS

A unique collaboration between University of Toronto aviation expert Philippe Lavoie and zoologists at the University of British Columbia offers new insights into how gulls shape their wings – findings that could be used to design more efficient drones.

Although a gliding bird’s ability to stabilize its flight path is critical to its ability to produce lift, relatively few quantitative studies on avian flight stability have been completed. This is what brought UBC researchers Christina Harvey, Vikram Baliga and Professor Doug Altshuler to Lavoie’s wind tunnel lab at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, or UTIAS.

The researchers measured the lift and drag on 12 different wing shapes, all with slightly different elbow angles. They determined that with a simple adjustment of gulls’ elbow joints – either to expand its wings outwards or inwards – the birds are able to transition across a broad range of wing shapes to stabilize glide.

When soaring, the wings are fully extended and more planar, corresponding to increased static stability. However, in windier and gustier conditions, gulls tend to reduce their elbow angle, resulting in a more rounded wing configuration with reduced static stability.

“If you can change the shape of the wings, you can create more stable configurations with lower drag when you want more endurance,” says Lavoie, who is an associate professor in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“Gulls can use updrafts to increase altitude so they don’t have to flap their wings as much to conserve energy. But if they need to make quick maneuvers, like diving to catch fish, they can change the shape of the wing for that particular purpose.”

U of T aviation expert Philippe Lavoie envisions drones that, like birds, could coast on thermal updrafts (photo by Neil Ta)

Studying how gulls use wing shape to soar long distances and control their flight is particularly interesting to Lavoie because of the potential to inform the design of future aircraft, including fixed-wing unpiloted aerial vehicles, also known as drones.

“The benefit of morphing is that you don’t need bulky control surfaces during flight and it makes it easier to take advantage of energy harvesting through soaring,” says Lavoie.

He imagines fixed-wing drones that could coast on thermal updrafts as they scan pipelines for defects, look for signs of drought or crop disease on large farms or monitor the movements of caribou herds. Fixed-wing drones can also be used to track the extent and evolution of forest fires.

“The idea of bio-inspired research is to try and understand how nature does it, given that it had millions of years to adapt to certain conditions,” says Lavoie.

“Once we do that, we can see if there are elements that we can pluck out for our own designs.”

The researchers also stressed the benefits and importance of interdisciplinary research.

“It was a great experience to work with Professor Lavoie, whose experience and knowledge was an indispensable part of the project. Conducting the research at the UTIAS wind tunnel was a key part of the work,” said UBC's Harvey.

“I look forward to continuing to combine engineering tools and expertise with biological questions so that we can better understand avian flight.”

“It was a very fun project; it’s always nice to have these different opportunities that come out from a different field,” adds Lavoie. “It keeps things fresh, and makes you think about problems from a different angle.”

'Research in action': U of T awarded 21 Canada Research Chairs

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 21:06:04 +0000

'Research in action': U of T awarded 21 Canada Research Chairs

noreen.rasbach Tue, 11/13/2018 - 16:06

Cutline

Kirsty Duncan, the federal science minister, talks to U of T Assistant Professor Angela Schoellig (right) and one of her students (left) about the self-flying drones created in Schoellig's lab (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Canada Research Chairs

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Medicine

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Meric Gertler

U of T Mississauga

Flying robots. New breast cancer treatments. Better health outcomes for sexually diverse groups. They are all examples of work by University of Toronto researchers who were today awarded new Canada Research Chairs.

In an announcement made at U of T, Kirsty Duncan, the federal science minister, revealed the university will be home to 21 new and renewed chairs as a result of the program’s most recent competition.

The total value of the funding associated with the U of T chairs is $19 million.

“It’s a source of great pride that the University of Toronto boasts so many great researchers who lead on discoveries that range from the microscopic to the galactic,” said Duncan, who was formerly a U of T researcher herself in health studies.

Created two decades ago, the Canada Research Chairs program is the centrepiece of the federal government’s strategy to make Canada a leader in research and development. The program seeks to attract and retain researchers in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

U of T holds the largest allocation of research chairs in the country, with some 275 chairs awarded to the university and its partner hospitals. Of the 21 new and renewed chairs awarded to U of T, half went to women and nearly 60 per cent supported emerging researchers.

Duncan thanked U of T and other post-secondary institutions for taking meaningful steps to boost the numbers of underrepresented groups in the federal program, citing numbers from the most recent competition.

“U of T supports this initiative wholeheartedly,” said U of T President Meric Gertler, adding the university is implementing the recommendations of an equity, diversity and inclusion working group that was struck last year to evaluate U of T’s research apparatus.

“We hold these principles as central to our public mission and our commitment to academic excellence.”

Duncan also used today’s U of T event to announce a plan to invest $210 million over the next five years to add 285 additional chairs to the federal program. That includes an additional supplement of up to $20,000 per chair to assist researchers who are in the early stages of their careers.

Angela Schoellig is one of 14 researchers from U of T who was awarded a new chair. An assistant professor at the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies, Schoellig’s work is focused on meshing artificial intelligence and advanced robotics to create self-driving cars, self-flying vehicles and robotic arms, among other things.

“Robotics promises to connect the virtual world with the real world,” Schoellig said at the event.

Schoellig will use the funding from her Canada Research Chair to tackle fundamental problems associated with machine learning and robotics control in devices like this miniature drone (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

There’s just one problem. The real world is an unpredictable place. Self-driving cars, for example, must cope with everything from reckless drivers to jaywalking pedestrians. Hence, Schoellig said the funding associated with her Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning for Robotics and Control will be used to tackle fundamental problems associated with machine learning so robots can better respond to unfamiliar situations.

To give attendees a taste of what goes on in her lab, Schoellig showed a video that included footage of a swarm of miniature drones flying in a vortex – a project created by one of her students.

Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, said Schoellig’s presentation served as a reminder that investing in fundamental research doesn’t only benefit researchers themselves.

“The research is really for the benefit of Canadians and the training opportunities it provides for students,” he said. “In less than two decades, the Canada Research Chairs program has transformed research in this country.”

From left to right: SSHRC President Ted Hewitt, Assistant Professor Angela Schoellig, Federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan, Professor Rama Khokha, U of T President Meric Gertler and U of T Vice-President, Research and Innovation Vivek Goel (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Rama Khokha’s research certainly qualifies as work that could benefit Canadians. A professor in the Faculty of Medicine and a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Khokha said her Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Adult Tissue Stem Cell Niches will be used to “fuel new ideas, especially around the prevention of breast cancer and how to create novel therapies for women with breast cancer.”

Not all of U of T’s new research chairs are working in laboratories.

With a focus on the sexual and mental health of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, Assistant Professor Daniel Grace was awarded a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Sexual and Gender Minority Health for his work at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health on understanding epidemics related to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Despite significant advancements in prevention and treatment in recent years, Grace said there remains a pressing need for research on how these advancements are actually being adopted in the real world.

“My research is really about understanding the everyday experiences of diverse, gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men – how they take up and use services and information, including persistent barriers to access, as well as the role of health-care providers,” Grace said.

He also studies the social and economic drivers of what he dubs a “mental health crisis” among sexual and gender diverse groups, and said the funds associated with his chair would also support collaborations with community groups to improve access to sexual and mental health information and services.

“I’m deeply committed to research in action,” he said, “asking questions that have real implications for the communities that I work with on the ground.”

In total, the federal government invested $156 million in 187 new and renewed research chairs through its most recent competition. They were awarded to 49 institutions across the country.

New U of T Canada Research Chairs

Brian Ciruna, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of molecular genetics and Hospital for Sick Children – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Genetics and Disease Modelling
Alan Davidson, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of molecular genetics - Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage-Based Technologies
Daniel Grace, assistant professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health - Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Sexual and Gender Minority Health
Rayjean J. Hung, associate professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Mount Sinai Hospital – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Integrative Molecular Epidemiology
Marc Johnson, associate professor, U of T Mississauga, department of biology – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Urban Environmental Science
Rama Khokha, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of medical biophysics and University Health Network – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Adult Tissue Stem Cell Niches
Carmen Logie, associate professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice with Marginalized Populations
Dana Philpott, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of immunology – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Microbe-host Interactions in Intestinal Homeostasis
Martine Puts, associate professor, Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Care of Frail Older Adults
Pierre Savard, professor, Faculty of Arts & Science, department of physics – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Experimental High Energy Physics
Angela Schoellig, assistant professor, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning for Robotics and Control
Daniel Simpson, assistant professor, Faculty of Arts & Science, department of statistical sciences – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Bayesian Spatial Modelling
Lisa Strug, associate professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Hospital for Sick Children – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genome Data Sciences
Mei Zhen, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of molecular genetics and Mount Sinai Hospital – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Neural Circuit Development and Function

Renewals of U of T Canada Research Chairs

Richard Bazinet, associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of nutritional sciences – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Brain Lipid Metabolism
Daniel Durocher, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of molecular genetics and Mount Sinai Hospital – Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Molecular Genetics of the DNA Damage Response
Jason Fish, associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology and University Health Network – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Vascular Cell and Molecular Biology
Patrick Gunning, professor, U of T Mississauga, department of chemical and physical sciences – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Medicinal Chemistry
Elizabeth Johnson, associate professor, U of T Mississauga, department of psychology – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Spoken Language Acquisition
Rosemary Martino, professor, Faculty of Medicine, department of speech-language pathology – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Swallowing Disorders
Piero Triverio, associate professor, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, department of electrical and computer engineering – Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Computational Electromagnetics

Bombardier invests in Toronto aerospace hub, creates U of T research centre on aircraft noise

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 13:44:05 +0000

Bombardier invests in Toronto aerospace hub, creates U of T research centre on aircraft noise

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 06/21/2018 - 09:44

Cutline

An aerial shot of Toronto’s Downsview Airport, where the Downsview Aerospace & Innovation Research hub is based (photo by Rene Beignet via Flickr)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

City & Culture

Aerospace

Bombardier Inc., the Canadian aerospace giant, is planning to spend millions to help establish an aerospace research hub near Downsview Airport with the University of Toronto and other local academic institutions as key partners.

The Montreal-based maker of planes and trains said Thursday it will invest $1.5 million over five years to fund core research at an “aeromaterials research centre” at Downsview, where it’s part of a consortium of industry and academic partners, including U of T, called the Downsview Aerospace & Innovation Research, or DAIR.

Starting next year, Bombardier is also investing $1 million over five years to set up new research centres at U of T and Ryerson University that will be focused on acoustics and advanced interiors, respectively. There will also be funding for landing gear research by Centennial College and the extension of a training program at the college’s Downsview campus.

“The idea that this would be well-funded and give us further collaborations with Bombardier is very exciting,” said Chris Damaren, the director of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), adding the institute also plans to seek collaborative research grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Damaren noted that UTIAS has worked with Bombardier on several projects in the past, and that DAIR’s vision includes eventually relocating UTIAS to Downsview Park from its current home near Dufferin Street and Steeles Avenue.

In addition to investing in academic and research activities, Bombardier said it will also support DAIR’s operations, providing $900,000 over three years, and work to preserve Downsview’s aerospace heritage. That includes spending $2.5 million to refurbish a heritage building on the Downsview site.

Other DAIR partners include Centennial College, York University, Canadensys Aerospace, Safran Landing Systems, Pratt & Whitney Canada, MDA, Flight Safety Canada, Honeywell and UTC Aerospace Systems.

Bombardier, which recently announced plans to sell its manufacturing site at Downsview and relocate the operation to Toronto Pearson International Airport, said it’s hoping greater collaboration between industry, academia and government will spur innovation in the Ontario aerospace sector.

“Since acquiring de Havilland in 1992, Bombardier has built strong relationships with local institutions to promote aerospace research and innovation,” François Caza, the vice-president of product development and chief engineer of Bombardier’s aerospace division, said in statement.

“Through this partnership with DAIR, we commit to supporting the development of this unique ecosystem for many years to come.”

Philippe Lavoie, an associate professor at UTIAS, will be one of two U of T researchers working with Bombardier to reduce aicraft noise (photo by Neil Ta)

From U of T’s perspective, the DAIR consortium represents an opportunity to deepen its relationship with one of Canada’s most innovative global companies in an industry that contributes about $28 billion to the Canadian economy.

“The University of Toronto is thrilled to be working alongside Bombardier, as well as the rest of the DAIR consortium, to build out an innovation hub at Downsview,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“Bombardier has the size, scale and ambition to turn the cutting-edge aerospace research of its academic partners into real-world applications with the potential to reach millions.”

Philippe Lavoie is one of two U of T researchers who will be working on noise reduction with Bombardier as part of the new UTIAS research centre. He said aircraft noise is a growing issue as global air traffic increases and urban growth leaves more airports surrounded by housing.

“What the aerospace industry is trying to do is make the noise footprint small enough that it fits within the airport itself,” said Lavoie, who is an associate professor at UTIAS.

While today’s jet engines are quieter than ever thanks to the advent of geared turbofan technology, the same can’t be said of other aircraft parts like wing slats and flaps and landing gear – which is where the U of T researchers will focus their attention.

“Historically engines were the number one sound emission by far, basically drowning out everything else,” Lavoie said. “But, in recent years with the advent of high bypass ratio turbo engines, they’re getting to the point where other components like high lift devices and landing gear can now be heard.”

The challenge, of course, is figuring out novel ways to reduce the noise signature of these components without compromising their core functions – a problem Lavoie says he and fellow UTIAS researcher Alis Ekmekci, who will also be working with Bombardier, are well-positioned to help solve.

“We’re really hoping to have a significant impact on the next generation of airplane that will come out of Bombardier,” he said.

U of T accelerator launches stream for space startups with Chris Hadfield at the controls

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 13:50:42 +0000

U of T accelerator launches stream for space startups with Chris Hadfield at the controls

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/06/2018 - 09:50

Cutline

Chris Hadfield, Expedition 34 flight engineer and Expedition 35 commander, participates in a spacesuit fit check at the Johnson Space Center in 2012 (photo by NASA/Mark Sowa via Flickr)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Artificial Intelligence

Creative Destruction Lab

Entrepreneneurship

Rotman School of Management

Space

Startups

The Creative Destruction Lab has helped build dozens of futuristic companies over the years – now it’s seeking entrepreneurs whose ideas are literally out of this world.

Working closely with former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, the seed-stage accelerator affiliated with the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management is launching a dedicated stream for space startups working on everything from interplanetary transportation to asteroid mining.

The new stream seeks to attract space-focused entrepreneurs from around the world while providing entrepreneurial minded Canadian researchers at places like the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, or UTIAS, with another way to get their innovative ideas off the ground.

“We see a next-generation of space entrepreneurship on the rise,” says Sheret Ross, a Rotman MBA alumnus who is leading the new CDL stream. “Yet, despite amazing talent in Canada, relatively few of those companies are being created here – we want to change that.”

With a goal of launching 60 successful space startups over the next five years, Ross says CDL plans to build a network of corporate partners, space agencies, astronauts, investors and seasoned entrepreneurs who can support these “really amazing PhD or master’s level students who want to commercialize their research” in the space realm.

A key ingredient will be the stream’s fellows – starting with Hadfield, one of Canada’s most accomplished astronauts and a founding fellow. The Sarnia, Ont., native has served in a variety of roles at NASA including as commander of the International Space Station, making him the first Canadian to command a spaceship. He will be joined at CDL by Anousheh Ansari, the co-founder of the Ansari X-Prize and the first self-funded woman to fly in space, and Christine Tovee, the former CTO of Airbus Group North America.

“We are at the frontier of a new space economy,” Hadfield said in a statement. “Now is the time to place a bet on the next generation of space entrepreneurs.”

Anousheh Ansari, the first self-funded woman to fly in space, is one of the program's fellows. She is pictured here inside the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft in September 2006 (photo by NASA via Flickr)

CDL’s space stream is the latest to be added to its rapidly expanding portfolio. The accelerator, one of nine at U of T, already boasts a dedicated stream for artificial intelligence companies and last year launched a stream focused on the nascent field of quantum machine learning. At the same time, the CDL model – which sees seasoned entrepreneurs and investors work with startups to set and meet goals – is experiencing significant growth after signing partnership deals with other Canadian business schools and New York University’s Stern School of Business.

CDL’s foray into the stars comes at a time when ventures like Elon Musk’s SpaceX are generating excitement about the private sector's future role in space. Nearly US$1 billion was raised by space companies during the first three months of this year in areas that spanned launch technologies, satellites and “in-space industrials,” according to a recent report by American venture fund Space Angels.

There are already a few U of T researchers who have dared to go where few entrepreneurs have gone before. Earlier this year, Kepler Communications successfully deployed its first nanosatellite aboard a Chinese rocket. The CDL startup, co-founded by U of T alumni Mina Mitry and Jeffrey Osborne, seeks to build out a constellation of low cost satellites to provide data communications links between connected devices on Earth and, eventually, in space.

Sheret Ross, a graduate of Rotman's MBA program, is heading up the space stream at the Creative Destruction Lab (photo by Chris Sorensen)

So what kind of space startups is CDL hoping to produce? Ross lists a variety of areas that have significant potential including: space mining, interplanetary transportation, space robotics, habitat construction, launching and propulsion technologies and the design of new radiation-resistant materials.

While CDL anticipates its entrepreneurs will tackle a myriad of big, hard-to-solve problems associated with space, Ross noted there are also near-term opportunities to apply space-oriented technologies closer to home. One example might be a space mining startup that uses satellite data to pinpoint new mineral deposits back here on Earth.

“People get lost in the magic of space,” Ross says. “But there are applications you can build a business around today.”

While applications for the nine-month program close on Aug. 10, Ross says CDL has already reached out to researchers and entrepreneurs around the globe to gauge interest and has received an enthusiastic response. “Having access to someone like Chris or Anousheh Ansari is so valuable to these companies,” Ross says.

“They won’t get that anywhere else.”

Learn more about U of T Entrepreneurship

U of T's aUToronto team wins first competition of AutoDrive Challenge

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 08 May 2018 14:45:02 +0000

U of T's aUToronto team wins first competition of AutoDrive Challenge

noreen.rasbach Tue, 05/08/2018 - 10:45

Cutline

Zeus, the aUToronto team’s self-driving car, pulls up to the start line at the inaugural competition of the three-year AutoDrive Challenge in Yuma, Ariz. (photo courtesy of SAW International)

Marit Mitchell

Topic

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Graduate Students