09:00-09:20

The Design, Construction, and Testing of a Pelton Wheel Driven Micro-Hydro Plant

The Pelton Wheel is designed based on the theoretical hydraulic head available from a residential ½” water pipe. The generator is constructed from a used permanent magnet DC motor, and chosen based on design parameters calculated from the available potential energy produced by the theoretical hydraulic head. The water jet is constructed from easy to assemble CPVC pipe and other plumbing supplies. A simple single phase rectifier circuit will be used in order to produce a more reliable DC signal. The testing will consist of measuring the voltage and RPMs produced by the generator and comparing the results to the theoretical values.

09.20 - 09.40

Human Hamster Wheel Interactive

We are developing a human-sized hamster wheel for the Museum of Science and Technology that can be used by a wide range of people. The system will include in addition to the wheel and Tesla coil a monitoring systems and an informative user interface. The goal of the project is to create an interactive way to demonstrate the amount of human effort required to produce electrical power.

09.40 - 10.00

Contra Rotating Wind Turbine System

The objective of this project is to build a reliable and efficient small wind energy converter (SWEC) in the range of 1 kW and 80 kW basing on key conceived and proven concepts: contra-rotating system and high performance new induction generator. TRIAS Innovations, University of Ottawa, PRONOX, and other industrial partners are planning to build, install, and test the 1 kW SWEC at the University of Ottawa by the mid of Summer 2011.

10.00 - 10.20

Smart Monitoring System for Machine Health Management

In this project, the University of Ottawa is cooperating with TRIAS Innovations to build a smart monitoring system as a test bed that integrates vibration and lubricant additive analysis into one device; when successful, will assist TRIAS to market and sell its lubricant additive as well as the monitoring system itself by exhibiting its effectiveness, quality, and reliability in a scientific/technical way.

10.20 - 10.40

Robeo! The Security Assistant

The goal of this project is to produce a mechatronics control platform for the security assistant: Robeo. The project's goals are ambitious: this humanoid robot should be able to assist the museums and other institutions in the security of their disposals using clusters of sensors, actuators, cameras, and signal recognition. It should be able to detect objects including smoke, water, doors, other materials, and it should be able to alarm a security system in case of a missing item or a problem.

11.00 - 11.20

ARISE Surface Vehicle Platform

The ARISE Surface Vehicle Platform is a custom-build robotic boat that can be operated remotely using a platform-independent client application that connects to the vehicle over Internet Protocol.  At first the vehicle was simply controlled manually with a controller, but improvements have been made to make the controls computer-assisted so that the vehicle can automatically compensate for uneven thrust, drag and cross-winds. Machine vision is also being added to the vehicle to allow it to autonomously navigate a marked navigation channel.

1.20 - 11.40

PIC-Based Voltage Chopper

The goal is to create a device that can selectively allow parts of AC voltage reach it’s load (“Voltage Chopper”). It should be compatible with wide variety of AC sources operating at either 50Hz or 60Hz and a adaptable with little (or no) hardware changes.

11.40 - 12.00

Mechatronics Hand

The goal of this project is to mimic the human movements for a hand. This involves multiple sensors on a human hand to digitalize the movements. The second part is for a mechanical hand to move in the same manner. For this, an interface with actuators and feedback must be in place. Therefore, there are 3 main parts to the project: the sensing of the human hand's movements, the processing of information and the movement of the mechanical hand. We have completed a proof of concept in the ELG3336 class . The transfer of information wirelessly and an adaptation of the mechanical hand are two area's we are looking to improve.

12.00 - 12.20

The Perfect Pint

This project involves developing a machine that poures a beer from a bottle to a glass while having certain restraints and goals. Firstly, we wanted the machine to pour a pint of beer with limited or no foam and secondly no precious loss of beer during process. We could accomplish this using a microcontroller and several servo motors. The challenge behind this machine is to be able to operate the system using different types of bottles and glasses regardless of their geometry.

12.40-13.00

Play and Learn "CoinBot"

This coin tosser/talking head plays heads or tails in a best 2 out of 3 match with a player. It launches a coin (with a black tail and white head) using a solenoid attached to its hand. It recognizes the outcome by using a phototransistor with reflective properties of colors, and responds accordingly with 10 different sounds. The system is mainly composed of a signal conditioning circuit, solenoid for flipping the coin, an Arduino microcontroller board and Voice Shield as an analog audio shield that allows playing recorded sounds, and a circuit that moves the mouth on cue from the sound picked up by the receiver. The electronic circuit is powered directly from the AC power line. A wooden box is used to house the circuit and the head is mounted on it. A rubber mask covers the head. A rotary solenoid and a small DC motor with gearbox are used to move the mouth of the head.

13.00 - 13.20

ECG-Based Oscillometric Blood Pressure Monitoring (Postgraduate)

Estimation of systolic and diastolic pressures from oscillometric measurements is a challenging task in non-invasive electronic blood pressure monitoring devices due to arrhythmias, obesity, and postural changes. To solve these challenges, we present a method by analyzing oscillometric pulses with the aid of electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. The ECG assisted oscillometric method provides an accurate estimation of blood pressure.