Monday, February 24, 2020

Robotic exoskeleton helps children take their first steps

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in Waterloo Stories.

Manmeet Maggu remembers being a fourth-year University of Waterloo student when his nephew, Praneit, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. With an illness that affects muscle tone, movement and motor skills, Maggu’s family braced for the reality that Praneit would never take his first steps.

Studying to become an engineer at the time, Maggu and classmate Rahul Udasi (BASc ’14) began searching for solutions. After no suitable options appeared, the pair put their mechatronic skills to work, applying what they had learned at Waterloo to address a global problem.

“Cerebral palsy is the most common physical disability among children with more than 500,000 cases in just North America,” Maggu says. “We soon realized that essentially for a child, it means they’re restricted to a wheelchair and we wanted to change that — we wanted to bring more options forward and enable the benefits of walking for him.”

Incorporating this challenge into their fourth-year engineering design project, Maggu and Udasi set off to Delhi, India to test their first robotic exoskeleton prototype on Praneit. Although a few ideations of the product were necessary, these initial efforts became the genesis of Trexo Robotics.

“At first, it did not work,” Maggu recalls. “Thankfully my brother has a workshop there, so we were able to fix the issues. We watched Praneit take his first steps. That was the proudest moment of my life.”

Today, the device is incorporated into Praneit’s daily activities, with the now 11-year-old taking more than 500 steps per session at home or even outside at a nearby park. It’s an experience that wasn’t a possibility before Trexo.

Read the full article.

New wayfinding sign installations coming soon

A message from the Campus Wayfinding Project.

You may have seen the new building signs recently installed across main campus. They are the first wave of a Wayfinding program created to provide a positive campus experience by helping people reach their destinations quickly and confidently. When complete, the University will have a consistent, coordinated and uniquely designed system that integrates pedestrian and vehicular wayfinding with public transit and parking.

Starting April 1 installation of pedestrian, parking and Campus Housing signage will begin. To prepare for this, construction of sign bases will commence Monday, March 2. 

The construction will mean that crews, excavation equipment, trucks, trailers and cement trucks will be on site and, to complete the work in a safe and swift manner, periodic, short-term road, sidewalk and pathway restrictions will be required. Access for emergency vehicles and those with accessibility needs will be maintained throughout and all efforts will be made to manage traffic for the safety of students, faculty, staff, visitors and workers. 

We ask that you use caution as you approach any site under construction.

If you have questions about the upcoming work or Campus Wayfinding, visit the Wayfinding Project website, where you will also find regular updates on campus disruptions.

IST to transition knowledge base and project management tools to Atlassian

A message from Information Systems & Technology

Information Systems & Technology (IST) is transitioning its current IT knowledge base and project management toolset from TeamDynamix (TDX) to Atlassian. The knowledge base will use Atlassian’s content collaboration tool, Confluence, while IST project management processes will be supported by the project management and issue tracking tool, Jira. This work will take place over February 27 and 28 as outlined below.  

Thursday, February 27

• Confluence and Jira will have Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS) web-based authentication enabled to support single sign-on. 

Friday, February 28

• Duo two-factor authentication (2FA) will be enabled for both platforms.
• The requirement to access either platform via VPN when off campus will be removed.  

What is the impact?

Knowledge base

• IST will begin to replace links to the TDX knowledge base with those for Confluence. Until this work is complete, support articles may be viewed in either TDX or Confluence.
• If a support article is being viewed in Confluence from off campus and before the end of day on February 28, VPN access will be required. 
• Effective February 28 (end of day), the IST Knowledge Base will be public and accessible from both on and off campus.

Project management

• Individuals previously managing or reporting on active projects in TDX have been contacted by IST directly regarding this transition.  

Logging into Confluence or Jira: Effective February 27, if you need to log in to either platform (e.g. to update an article), you will be required to enter your username as userid@uwaterloo.ca followed by your WatIAM password. Effective February 28, if those logging in have also opted in to Duo 2FA, they will receive an authentication prompt. 

You are invited to send questions to the IST Service Desk at helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.