MINIMA
Adrienne Chan, Kenny Chan, Adele Chui, Kenny Lam
Minima’s goal is to reduce impact force post-collision for bicycle couriers. 70% of bicycle couriers have been out of work due to work-related injuries, mainly from collisions with cars that occur due to reckless cycling behaviour encouraged by the industry’s piece-rate system. Minima detects a collision with a sensor system and then deploys an on-the-body airbag to provide impact reduction in the case of a collision. With Minima, couriers can reduce the number of work days they take off as a result of injury.
AUTOMATIC BRAKE/LOCKING SYSTEM FOR WHEELCHAIRS
Tristan Amini, Jonathan Devries, Mousa Khan, Aaron Wiersma
The goal of the project is to develop and validate an automatic brake/locking system for wheelchairs. The system will eliminate the need for wheelchair users to remember to engage their locks whenever they wish to leave their wheelchairs. This will reduce the number of falling accidents by reducing the risk of wheelchair rollback, an event that leaves the user without support when standing up.
ARIA (ASSISTED RECORDING OF INFANT ACTIVITY)
Jonathan Chan, Yang Chen, Fionna Fenlon, Sarah McKenzie
Today public health organizations strongly recommend that families record information about their infant’s activities and development to track trends and alert parents to any issues with their child. We are helping parents easily record information about their child, view activity history on an app, and share with public health representatives to ensure that children and families are getting the best support possible.
KENKO
Susan Giang, Brian So, Zheng Wei, Zi Zhang
Diagnosed Type 2 pre-diabetic young adults who lack diabetes education are not carrying out informed eating patterns that will help them revert to normoglycemic levels. Kenko is a software solution that aims to improve diabetes literacy through educational information from vetted sources, food tracking assisted by computer vision, and personalized recommendations on how to improve current eating patterns.
EUREKA
Tyron Jung, Veronica Kim
The goal of our project is to help high school students explore the career market and develop an education path towards their ideal careers. We are focusing on building an effective search engine with an engaging interface that helps students get started on thinking about their futures. Another key aspect of our solution is allowing students to develop a career roadmap which they can adjust and track over time to accommodate the dynamic growth of their skills and personal interests.
TRUCK TRAILER SNOW AND ICE REMOVAL
Thanuree Pathiranawasam, Daniel Penner, Nathan Schaper, Steven Thomas
Snow and ice falling off transport truck trailers can cause decreased visibility, damage vehicles, and injure motorists. This project focuses on preventing these hazards in situations in which there are no fixed-in-place snow and ice removal solutions available to truck drivers; such as at truck stops, or at customer facilities. Removing snow and ice build-up from trailers has financial incentives for trucking companies including improving fuel economy and reducing the risk of
fines, insurance claims, and civil litigation.
MOO
Charis Chao, Dannie Fu, Lorik Nimani, Evan Shen
Kenyan Kids Foundation Canada is a registered Canadian charity working to reduce poverty and empower Kenyan families. The foundation’s Cooperative Dairy Development program is helping to improve current dairy farming practices in Cherangany, Kenya. This project implements a management tool that will provide real-time tracking of the quality and quantity of milk provided by hundreds of small-scale dairy farmers. This tool will help the dairy cooperative reduce fraud and improve farm incomes by ensuring that they have accurate and timely records.
QLESS
Cassandra Chan, Joshua Ching, Kelly Li, Evan Yeung
The project aims to improve the walk-in clinic queueing experience by reducing the perceived wait time caused by uncertain and unfair waits that lack transparency. To achieve this, the team had developed a method of predicting individual wait times for patients based on numerous features. The clinic receptionist interacts with the system via an administrative interface allowing for input of patient data, paging of patients, etc. Via a public waiting room display, patients can view their personal waiting time, see their queue position, and view who is being paged.
HIZA
Sanhar Balachandran, Sadruddin Hashmani, Bainian Liu, Nabeel Shahid
Currently, athletes between the age of 15 and 25 playing pivoting sports have the highest incidence of ACL tears. Our goal is to design a solution to inform collegiate athletes about how they place themselves at risk of getting a non-contact ACL injury by detecting various actions such as a jump, pivot and cut and determining whether they are unsafe using IMUs and pattern recognition models.
QUANTPATH
Matthew Gougeon, Nehal Kanetkar, Brady Kieffer, Meghan Yabsley
QuantPath is a system for pathologists that aims to improve the information available to them at the time of diagnosis. Incidences of error and long wait times offer reasons to improve the current process for obtaining diagnosis. QuantPath makes use of digitized pathology images and together with machine learning algorithms surfaces information that pathologists may not have been able to find previously. The results of the machine learning algorithm are then presented to the pathologist in a manner that assists them in making a diagnosis.
SHAREIT
Keren Chandran, Abigail Scott, Siddhanth Unnithan, Julia Zhang
ShareIt is a platform for researchers and students to find and use available equipment or resources belonging to individuals within the University of Waterloo, in exchange for monetary incentives. The platform expedites the process of obtaining equipment critical for new and ongoing research, thus avoiding the reliance on tiresome and lengthy grant application processes. The development of an equipment and resource sharing economy within ShareIt, aims to further encourage collaboration and research amongst individuals within the University.
SECURE
Angela Chao, Aye Chan Htun, Matthew Robichaud, Liyang Wang
seCure is a novel instrument for minimally invasive cardiac surgery, specifically, mitral valve repair. Its main objectives are to reduce duration and risk of surgery by improving access and visibility during the procedure, thus reducing the need for open-heart access. The instrument has been designed to automate repetitive and challenging aspects of the procedure, making mitral valve repair more accessible to a largely untreated patient population.
MIRU
Anshuman Patnaik, Linda Wang, Edrick Wong, Justin Wong
MIRU is a natural-feeling assistive system for any home assistant that help visually impaired individuals locate misplaced objects in the kitchen. The goal of the team is to reduce the cognitive workload required for blind users to locate and recognize displaced objects in the kitchen. However, the long-term vision is to create a natural-feeling assistive system that is able to help all users in a kitchen setting.
ACTIVITY TRACKING FOR OLDER ADULTS WITH REDUCED MOBILITY
Sophia Castellarin, Dhananjay Gosain, Raunaq Suri, Cory Welch
This project aims to track the activity done by older adults while using walkers. Current fitness trackers are unable to detect the different walking patterns that are present while using a walker. An application is also developed for older adults to view their activity history over time and take a proactive approach to maintaining an active lifestyle.
PHYSIOBUDDY
Shirley Ng, Kassandra Predovic, Ritu Shah, Elizaveta Vorobieva
PhysioBuddy aims to reduce the physiotherapy recovery time for post-surgery patients by increasing the accuracy of at home exercises, motivating patients to complete their routine, and increasing transparency between patients and therapists. Our solution uses a band embedded with wireless sEMG sensors that is placed around the injured site. The band provides real time feedback on muscle activation, allowing patients to see if they are completing their exercises correctly. PhysioBuddy will also provide therapists with rich insights into their patient's progress for increased treatment personalization.
PRIV - SIMPLIFYING PRIVACY
Katherine Carras, Ramandeep Farmaha, Krishn Ramesh, Anastasia Santasheva
Priv summarizes internet privacy policies for users so they can understand how data is collected about them online. This is done using natural language processing, machine learning classification, and provided as a browser extension to allow seamless integration with the user's workflow.
BAYMAX
Stephanie Hu, Terence Li, Jordan May, Helen Tsvirinkal
Baymax is a reminder system designed to help older adults living at home to better manage their medication regimen. The system involves integration with current pharmacy technologies, allowing older adults to seamlessly import medication information directly from their prescriptions. The system then uses the information to setup multi-feedback reminders and alerts. Overall, Baymax will help eliminate the cognitive load required for older adults to adhere to their prescriptions.
CATALYST
Maathusan Rajendram, Arumoy Shome, Mira Sleiman
Seeking to aid the development of individuals with down syndrome through the application of game-based assessment. Catalyst will provide parents and teachers rich information on the strengths, weaknesses and learning progress of individuals with down syndrome. It allows parents to take the necessary actions required to help support the development of their child, while also enabling teachers to tailor their content to the individual’s needs.
PROJECT VANTAGE
Jayson Bharuchi, Allen Chan, Trent Lavoie, River Wong
First-time vehicle buyers may not know which vehicles are best suited to their driving style and needs due to the vast selection of offerings available on the market. Project Vantage is a solution which measures various characteristics of a buyer’s test drive and attempts to recommend cars tailored to the buyer’s driving style, needs, and wants.
EMPIRE EXCHANGE
Peter Gokhshteyn, Kevin Michael
Empire Exchange is a crowdfunding platform for fractional real estate equity built on the ethereum blockchain. Our platform uses machine learning to predict the valuation of preconstruction projects and exposes that information to prospective investors on a web based trading platform.
AUTOMATED QUALITY CONTROL
Chris Chaplinsky, Majdi Khalil, Shubam Mehta
The project focuses on the use of image processing to detect imperfections in stitching in the automotive industry. The use of hardware and software components to help detect various type of defects. The scope of the project is on automotive seats as well as headrests and airbags. The use of various image processing algorithms along with machine learning is used to detect the defects in the stitching, this is along with heavy focus on the hardware and software components, as they are equally important.
NEUTRATEX
Sophie Cheong, Yiwei Yao
Using NLP to detect and reduce gender and career bias in children's books, NeutraTex aims to mitigate the societal pressures and psychological influences that affect their future career and life decision choices.
POTENTIA
Melanie Levy-Hara, Andrew Smiles, Jason Phachanla, Cyrus Titina, Alexander Sterling
Construction and manufacturing workers have the highest risk for stress and strain injuries in the work place. Potentia is focusing on augmenting human strength to reduce the injury rate in manufacturing environments by building an autonomous powered exoskeleton to support the elbow joint. We are using EMG sensors to control the movement in the arm, with safety features in case of power loss. We are working with Toyota to find the movements on the assembly line that cause the most elbow injuries.
EXCAVATOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (EDS)
Hannah Van Opstal, Cassia Deering, Jared Baribeau, Kieran Ratcliffe, Shruti Appiah, Marshall Mykietyshyn
A semi-autonomous robotic delivery system for an unmanned landmine excavator that improves the safety and efficiency of humanitarian demining operations. The system provides an interface for the human operator to transport the landmine excavator to the landmine site, place it over the landmine, and retrieve it after excavation. This project is in partnership with Demine Robotics, the makers of the landmine excavator.
THRU VIEW VEIN FINDER
Sophie Laviolette, Tristan Kuehn, Donovan Maudsley, Joey Duffy, Jack Gunn
Venepuncture, the process by which a needle is inserted into a vein to draw blood or give medicine intravenously, is one of the most common medical procedures performed each day. ThrU View Vein Finder aims to minimize the failure rate of venepuncture by providing the practitioner with an inside view of the area of interest, thereby facilitating the selection of an appropriate vein.
HYPERLOOP PROPULSION SYSTEM
Yazan Obeidi, Greg Hill, Neil McClean
In collaboration with Waterloop, the UW Hyperloop team, we are building a standalone half scale propulsion system designed to deliver a 150 kg pod upwards of 100 m/s (360 km/h) in the 1.6 km Hyperloop at the third SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. The system will assist the team by allowing for rapid prototyping and empirical testing for crucial performance aspects such as motor and tire design, heat and power management, and stability and traction control.