SYSTEMS DESIGN ENGINEERING
FAKTA
Prian Kuhanandan, Joe Yang, Chris Zhang, Sammie Bae, Jacob Chan
Fakta aims to transform the news consumption experience to build a more functional, well-informed democratic society. To do this, the platform provides readers with more insight into the quality, trustworthiness and legitimacy of the news they consume, and mitigates the filter bubbles and echo chambers that are prevalent on the internet today. The platform promotes balanced discussion and features automated annotations that provide information about the author, fallacious reasoning and verification of facts.
POSTURE PERFECT
Saif Khan, Melad Khajepour, Hassan Almusawi, Vik Kalkat
There’s a lack of convenient methods to assess lifting technique at gyms. This is problematic for beginner and amateur lifters who have limited experience with free-weights. The solution? Meet Posture Perfect, the real-time form assessment device. A 3D camera tracks your joint coordinates while you perform exercises, while an onboard computer system continuously validates your form using a list of known anthropometric measurements. This provides continuous intra-workout feedback as well as a post-workout analysis to improve your technique and help you workout safely and effectively.
PROJECT BEACON
Oscar Lo, Lily Ren, Clara Lau, Dae Jeon
Project Beacon is a solution to help post-secondary students better access mental health resources. It utilizes professionally validated triage scales to provide accurate recommendations based on the student's conditions and preferences. The solution also improves its user's literacy and knowledge on mental health.
ROOMROOM
Cathy Jin, Jonathan Wen, Philos Tsai, Chenlei Shen
This mobile software application allows university students living off-campus to find compatible roommates based on similar lifestyle habits and compatible conflict resolution styles so that the amount of future roommate conflicts are reduced.
ELIXR
Andrew Chung, Tony Bao, Jodi Lee, Zara Hasan
Elixr is a software solution to be used by psychotherapy clients with mild to moderate social anxiety. Its goal is to improve the effectiveness of therapy by motivating and supporting clients in attempting, completing and reflecting on out-of-session homework activities (focusing on exposure tasks), to increase the rate of homework compliance
REKA
Laura Bingeman, Nisa Sial, Hannah Sennik, Abiramy Kuganesan
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) provides a method of speech production for individuals who face challenges expressing themselves verbally. Currently, the standard vocabulary on AAC devices is limited and the communication speed is extremely slow. Reka aims to improve the communication experience for AAC users by leveraging sensors to extract information about communication context, synthesize the inputs, and provide users with informed word suggestions. Reka will also alleviate responsibilities for caregivers who often spend time programming customized vocabulary on AAC devices.
HYDRACHARGE
Rachael Schachtler, Eric Zhang, Anrui (Andrew) Chen, Kaley Bibic
HydraCharge is a powering system which extends the battery life of WatHydra, a water main leak detection system. WatHydra’s system is installed via fire hydrants to characterize otherwise undetected leaks in city water mains, and alert city officials to decrease drinking water loss. The high frequency of data collection causes battery life to drain quickly and be replaced. To make this system more practical for city maintenance, HydraCharge uses the system’s surrounding environment to recharge the battery and extend its life.
MEERKAT
Gwynne Burgess, Mohamed Moussa, Tim Tsang, Meera Kanani
Charities struggle to find volunteers with the necessary skills to complete their tasks. Volunteers struggle to find meaningful opportunities to allow them to give back, gain new skills, and grow their network. Meerkat is intelligently matching volunteers and charities to improve and add value to the volunteering experience.
MERM
Colin Vander Glas, Peter Zhang, Spencer Hivert, Zachariah Pustowka
In today's digital age, workers face an unprecedented amount of information to perform in their jobs. Navigating the vast swells of information can leave workers feeling confused and overloaded. This information is often spread over a number of different platforms, and conventional tools such as bookmarks and emails are reaching their limits. MERM combines both content and context to create a customized and effective information cataloguing and retrieval system. With MERM, resources can be easily catalogued, accessed and shared, increasing team productivity.
CIRCLES
Wayne Wu, Emily Shepherd, Eric Woolven, Jason Manson-Hing, Rachel Lo
Circles is an online platform designed to support and encourage meaningful social interactions among older adults living at home. It aims to allow individuals to discover groups of adults with similar interests and participate in recurring, meaningful, semi-facilitated discussions and activities. Being a primary software-based solution, Circles is designed to minimize the cost of adoption and hardware requirements for end users to allow for more widespread availability amongst prospective users.
TALOS
Victoria Canning-Choi, Benjamin Caldwell, Sebastian Wetteskind, Steven Jia
Money problems are the leading cause of stress among North Americans, but breaking bad financial habits is notoriously difficult. For those who have less experience managing their personal finances, it’s hard to know where to start. Talos, a proactive mobile budgeting app, helps millennials in North America to easily track, manage, and improve their spending habits so they can obtain financial peace-of-mind. Persuasive design via positive motivation and smart reminders is used to increase financial self-awareness and help users make more meaningful purchases.
AMBR
Jerry Bai, Ali Akram, Simran Jassal, Sahir Vellani, Anojan Gunasekaran
Ambr is a food inventory tracking system to be used by users within a household. Users input their food inputs and outputs through the audio interface, which populates the app. Ambr provides users with all of the information they need to make more informed food decisions, including recommended recipes, shopping lists and reminders of food close to expiry. Through consuming food more effectively, users can reduce food waste and increase savings on food.
ICE HUT 2.0
Rachel Schwegel, Colin Brum, Emily Fratin, Rosalind Slaman
An important aspect of some Indigenous cultures is the practice of sharing food that has been harvested by community members. This allows the community to ensure that every member has access to traditional food items, which is often less expensive and provides more nutrition than store-bought food while helping to improve Northern food security. Our community freezer aims to preserve this tradition, and be easily maintained by local community members at a low cost through the use of renewable energy and passive cooling technology.
CAPDRIVE
Nathan Hoeve, Charlotte Bond, Jake Strang, James Liu
The introduction of fully-autonomous vehicles to public roads will necessitate new methods for communicating with pedestrians and cyclists. Traditionally, drivers and those outside the vehicle are required at times to communicate through gestures, eye contact, and implicit cues such as head direction. CapDrive is an exploration of external human machine interfaces for autonomous vehicles that could fill this communication gap.
GET REC’D
Rishi Goel, Matthew McLeod, Nolan Dey, Cole Jackes
Current music recommender systems are designed to provide recommendations similar to past musical consumption. This causes stale recommendations over time and a decrease in user satisfaction as the suggestions become increasingly repetitive. Our goal is to develop a music recommender system that provides more diverse recommendations for daily music listeners while still being enjoyable to consume. This will hopefully lead to an increase in novel music discovery and user satisfaction.
PHOTOS++
Iryna Shvydchenko, Stefan Pleava
With the ever-increasing amount of photos in the world, people are struggling more every day to understand and explore their photos. This new way to browse and find photos within your camera roll decreases the number of irrelevant photos seen in order to make it faster to find specific photos. Photos++ groups your photos automatically and help you identify your favourite photos.
INTERDISCIPLINARY
PULSE HOME
Emman Haider, Paula Pryzbylski, Sara Turner
Pulse Home is a panelized housing technology addressing the Canadian Indigenous housing crisis. Pulse partnered with Habitat for Humanity, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and three Atlantic Indigenous communities to develop a housing solution that will address the housing shortage on reserves while enabling employment of community members. Expandable roofing, foundation and wall assemblies can be easily constructed by unskilled workers. This provides small affordable homes for youth that can be expanded to meet growing family needs.
AKOMODI
Lucas Compton, Varnit Grewal, Claire Hamilton, Nicholas Mohammed, Phil Moloughney
Akomodi is an assistive device for children with severe Cerebral Palsy that allows them to accomplish all their daily tasks from one device giving them more independence and bodily autonomy. By combining the functions of a commode chair, standing frame, supine stander, and standard wheelchair, this device eliminates the need for caregivers to transfer children between devices throughout the day.
STENCILOR
Chris Ahrbeck, Andrew Welsh, Anthony Duffy
In craniosynostosis surgery, a surgeon reshapes an infant’s head by making a series of cuts on the skull. The objective of StencilOR is to assist the surgeon in performing the incisions consistently, at optimal locations. A 3D pre-operative plan is created utilizing an algorithm developed by the UW Combinatorics & Optimization department, in partnership with SickKids Hospital. Through projection mapping of incision locations, the system transforms and displays the 3D surgical plan onto the patient skull in the operating room.