Fresh ideas flow thick and fast at UVic engineering showcase
Smart-technology electric booster power for bicycles and a forest-fire detection system were just two of the 43 ideas on display Thursday at the University of Victoria as engineering students showed off their graduation projects.
The “capstone projects” are a final graduation requirement for 156 engineering students attending UVic.
They will be judged and the best one will receive a small cash prize from the Victoria chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, an international agency dedicated to improving life with better technology.
Assistant professor Thirumarai Ilamparithi, of UVic electrical engineering, said students work in teams and are encouraged to work across specialties. A software engineer may collaborate with an electrical engineer or a bio-medical engineering specialist.
This year, teams were encouraged to consult with UVic business students to include some elements of entrepreneurship in their project, Ilamparithi said.
“It’s a lot of work,” Ilamparithi said. “They go right from scratch, do market research, identify potential customers and then come up with a design process and figure out how to implement it.
“What really seems to keep them going is they have really good ideas. And they are really passionate about them and so they really pursue them.”
Joe Kaplan and four others looked at bicycling and decided a little boost of electrical power would make commuting over Victoria’s hills and little easier.
The team developed the Caboost: a little trailer-style device that attaches behind a bicycle’s rear wheel. All on its own the electric motor can push a cyclist as fast as 27 km/h.
It’s intuitive enough to be safe and avoid pushing a cyclist into an accident. The Caboost carries enough computer software to allow it to know when to push and when not to.
“It can tell when you are pedalling and it can tell when you are braking,” Kaplan said. “So when you are braking it will just back off.”
Michael Sandhu, another electrical engineering student, was one of four students who developed remote sensors for monitoring the air for signs of forest fires.
The sensors, whose prototype is smaller than a paperback novel, monitor levels of carbon-based gases associated with forest fires, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane.
With many sensors laid out in a grid across a landscape they could detect forest-fire flareups. Linked via wireless technology they could alert a control centre to dispatch firefighters.
The devices could also be arranged in areas worthy of extra caution, such as urban zones.
Nobody from the forest industry has approached them yet about developing the device beyond a prototype.
“That would be the next step,” Sandhu said.
“Right now it’s more of a concept project to show it would work.”