UBC Engineering students set to launch ‘sailbot’ to Hawaii

August 31, 2022

This article originally appeared in APSC News.

Raye is the first autonomous, robotic sailboat designed by students to cross the Pacific.

Editor’s note: After an unsuccessful launch attempt in Victoria due to technical and weather challenges, Sailbot announced on September 12 that Raye’s launch is now rescheduled for summer 2023..

Get ready for the next leap forward in autonomous driving—on the water. Raye, an 18-foot-long autonomous sailboat (or ‘sailbot’), will be launching on her maiden voyage from Victoria, BC to Maui, Hawaii this upcoming week.

Built and developed by passionate students from the UBC Sailbot engineering design team, Raye will navigate and sail 2,308 nautical miles (4,274 km) across the Pacific Ocean, without a human crew.

“This has been a real labour of love, creativity and innovation by over 200 engineering students in the last six years,” said Asvin Sankaran, student co-captain. “We’ve successfully tested Raye on land and in water, and are really excited to send her off.”

Learning from the past

Raye represents the culmination of lessons learned from multi-year wins at the International Robotic Sailing Regatta on lakes, as well as the team’s first attempt at an ocean-bound autonomous vessel.

UBC Sailbot launched Ada—named after the world’s first computer engineer Ada Lovelace—in 2016 with the aim of crossing the Atlantic. She tragically met her demise when a hurricane hit, her rudder failed, and she was thought lost at sea.

A year later, to the team’s enormous surprise, the R.V. Neil Armstrong called: Ada had been found and would be returned.

“Taking Ada’s design successes and failures, we were able to redesign most of Raye’s components, such as putting in dual rudders, a stronger carbon fiber hull, and new local and global pathfinding algorithms,” said David Alexander, student co-captain.

The changes in this iteration of the team’s sailbot demonstrate new possibilities for the marine industry. The development of self-sailing vessels promises new and improved navigation tools, collision avoidance systems, and to automate surveillance (reducing the number of vulnerable humans in dangerous situations at sea).

Honouring the past

Fittingly, Raye is named after the late Raye Montague, the first naval architect to use a computer program to generate a rough draft of a ship within 19 hours—compared to the industry’s then-standard of two years on paper.

“Raye’s life is an incredible story of hardship, dedication, and perseverance,” said Ashley Chang, mechanical project lead for UBC Sailbot. “Being an African-American female engineer in the US Navy was a tremendous challenge in the 1950s. And to have overcome those obstacles and revolutionize the naval engineering industry, she is truly inspirational, especially for young women in STEM.”

The team wrote to Montague in 2018 for permission to name the boat after her and were delighted to receive her blessing, a few months before her passing.

“She asked me to convey her sincere appreciation to you all and asked me to emphasize this means a great deal,” Montague’s son wrote. “She said that in those days long ago it was difficult for many to visualize the importance of numerical control and the plethora of robotic applications.

“Her words were ‘…this recognition makes me feel like all that work was worth it.’”

Tracking the voyage

Follow Raye through her tracking website (live upon her launch) and by connecting with UBC Sailbot on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Two NAME students awarded 2022 Jagdeep Singh Bakshi Scholarship

August 25, 2022

The 2022 Jagdeep Singh Bakshi Scholarship in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering has has been awarded to two NAME Master of Engineering students, recognizing their excellence in the two areas of the award: Visal Katamaneni for leadership and Yves-Etienne Landry for academic excellence. The Jagdeep Singh Bakshi Scholarship continues the legacy of this late industry leader in supporting future generations of marine engineers and naval architects.

Mechanical Engineering welcomes robotics researcher Dr. Kefei Wen

August 17, 2022

Robotics specialist Dr. Kefei Wen is joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s faculty team as an Assistant Professor. Coming to UBC from a postdoctoral fellowship at the Continuum Robotics Laboratory at the University of Toronto, Dr. Wen’s research focuses on physical interaction between humans and robots, specifically parallel robots, and his research interests also include kinematics, dynamics, and control of complex robotic systems.

Parallel robotics are frequently used in manufacturing, where multiple jointed parallel legs attached to the ground are used to tilt a platform. During his Ph.D. studies at Université Laval, Dr. Wen developed a methodology for synthesizing novel kinematically redundant parallel manipulators, robotic systems which are human-friendly, singularity-free, and have outstanding rotational capabilities, making them suitable for physical human-robot interaction.

His work at the University of Toronto involved unifying the modelling approaches of both rigid parallel robots and tendon-driven parallel continuum robots. In 2020 he was recognized with an ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics Reviewers of the Year Award, and in 2021 a paper he co-authored was selected for Honorable Mention by IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Dr. Wen will join our Manufacturing Automation and Robotics research area, and is starting a new research group, the Advanced Robotics Laboratory. He joins our teaching team in Term 2 of 2022W as an instructor for Computer Control of Mechatronics Systems. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Wen to the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the UBC community!

A robotic system called a novel kinematically redundant parallel manipulator, with three pairs of jointed parallel legs

Simulation of a human reaching out to interact with a robotic manipulator, hung from an overhead gantry.

The first image is a prototype of a novel kinematically redundant parallel manipulator. The second image shows how such a system could be used for human-robot interaction.

MECH, MAL lab, ICICS involved in UBC-Fraunhofer Collaboration on Industrial Digital Transformation

August 15, 2022

Within APSC, the collaboration is being supported by the Manufacturing Automation Laboratory (under the leadership of Prof. Yusuf Altintas), the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining, and the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems. Aerospace, automotive and machine tools manufacturing can look forward to new digital services that promise to make their operations more efficient and productive.

Marine Industry selects winning designs at 2022 NAME Student Design Celebration

August 13, 2022

This spring the UBC Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering program returned to an in-person Student Design Celebration for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. After two years of online student presentations, we were able to welcome back our marine industry colleagues and alumni to a sold-out evening of networking, dinner and design. With representatives from many local shipyards and naval design firms in the audience, NAME Master of Engineering students put their best feet forward presenting designs that were the culmination of their academic learning and their final NAME 591 Computer Aided Ship Design course.

Research collaboration on cancer therapy receives CIHR Project Grant

August 12, 2022

Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Hongshen Ma and the School of Biomedical Engineering’s Professor Megan Levings have received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant to support their research collaboration on chimeric antigen receptor cell therapies used to treat cancer.

The purpose of the CIHR Project Grant Program is to “contribute to the creation and use of health-related knowledge.” Aiming to foster projects with the greatest potential for impact, the Project Grants fund work conducted by individual or groups of researchers on the grounds of the chosen projects’ “significance, impact and feasibility.”

Chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy modifies a cancer patient’s own immune cells to provide them with the ability to fight cancer cells. Dr. Ma and Dr. Levings aim to analyze these engineered cells at the single cell level to improve the design and manufacture of this type of cancer therapy. The CIHR Project Grant will provide $864,450 over five years to support this work.

Dr. Ma and Dr. Levings research is one of several projects from Applied Science to receive CIHR funding from their 2022 spring competition. Read more at: https://apsc.ubc.ca/news/2022/cihr-project-grants-awarded-to-ubc-applied-science-research-cancer-therapy-and-heart.

UBC team deploys pollution-sniffing mobile lab

August 11, 2022

Watch out, Vancouver. The PLUME van is coming soon to a location near you.

An “air pollution lab on wheels,” PLUME will be used to measure concentrations of air pollutants across the city including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ground-level ozone, black carbon, methane, volatile organic compounds, and various sizes of ultrafine particles that can affect air quality.

PLUME, which stands for Portable Laboratory for Understanding Human-Made Emissions was developed by Dr. Naomi Zimmerman, a professor of mechanical engineering who studies air quality and its impacts on health and the environment.

Her team at IREACH lab will use air quality data collected by the van to build a map of the city, showing how levels of pollution components change over time.

PLUME will be used to measure concentrations of air pollutants across the city.

“Using a mobile laboratory rather than fixed air quality sensors means we can cover a greater distance,” says Zimmerman. “We can sample anywhere from highways, to by the ocean, to the middle of a field with the same instrumentation in a single day. The instruments in the van can collect data as often as every second.”

Davi de Ferreyro Monticelli, a PhD student in the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences usually drives the van along with one other person to monitor the instruments.

“PLUME enables us to access locations where it may be more difficult to install expensive monitoring equipment. As we move the van, we can also sample the air in transit and see in real-time how concentrations of multiple pollutants change—giving us an idea of the air quality in a specific location.”

While the van runs on diesel as there are no electric vans currently available in the market of the size required due to the size of the instrumentation, PLUME complies with the most rigorous emissions standards—the LEV III Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle standards. Dr. Zimmerman adds: “The instrumentation is all electric, supported by an advanced inverter and marine batteries, making PLUME one of the most environmentally friendly mobile laboratories in the world.”

Helping to understand environmental injustice

PLUME is already being used to collect information on unpleasant smells in Metro Vancouver.

Called Smell Vancouver, the project and its associated web app is as part of a larger effort to understand air quality and its implications for environmental injustice in the region.

Zimmerman cites research that links breathing polluted air to numerous health problems, and notes that air pollution is linked to an estimated nine million premature deaths per year worldwide.

“Our most socially and materially deprived communities are frequently exposed to disproportionate levels of air pollution and it’s important to understand their experience of air quality. Odours are important as well—cannabis odours, industrial odours, chemical odours and other unpleasant smells. Are the same communities struggling from odours also suffering air pollution?”

Advanced pollution instrumentation on the van’s dashboard.

Ultimately the team hopes to start drawing links between air pollutants and odour.

“If we can start publishing maps of link to air quality and odour that would be really exciting and of course we would continue to engage with policymakers who are partners on almost every project that I work on to make sure the knowledge is disseminated and people can understand it and next steps can be taken,” says Zimmerman.

This article originally appeared on UBC News. Photos: Paul Joseph/UBC Mechanical Engineering.

New “See-N-Seq” technology enables RNA sequencing of specific single cells identified using microscopy

August 4, 2022

A person wearing gloves places a sample in a microwell plate

The Multi Scale Design Laboratory (MDL) lead by Professor Hongshen Ma has recently published a new paper, “See-N-Seq: RNA sequencing of target single cells identified by microscopy via micropatterning of hydrogel porosity”. MDL researchers have developed a new method, “See-N-Seq,” that uses a micropatterned hydrogel to capture target cells for single cell RNA sequencing. This approach enables rapid screening of cells without having to physically transport individual cells to prepare them for sequencing.

Single cell RNA sequencing can provide unique insights into the genes that produce specific cellular phenotypes and behaviours. However, these observable traits are often elusive or can only be identified using imaging, which makes selecting cells at random for sequencing an ineffective technique. See-N-Seq provides an efficient method to isolate specific single cells from a larger sample. The sample material is placed in standard microwell plates, where an initial layer of porous hydrogel traps the sample cells so they can be analyzed at the same time through microscopy. Once the target cell is identified, a second layer of hydrogel – this time non-porous and micropatterned with a laser – traps the other cells while allowing the target cell to be accessed and allowing in-place RNA extraction. This method allows genetic data to be associated with specific cellular phenotypes and behaviours.

“See-N-Seq: RNA sequencing of target single cells identified by microscopy via micropatterning of hydrogel porosity” has been published in Communications Biology, part of the Nature portfolio of journals. It is available at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03703-3.

Figure 1. Selective single cell RNA sequencing using See-N-Seq

New publication relates CO2 levels with indoor temperature comfort

July 25, 2022

Could how comfortable building occupants find their indoor temperature be predicted by including measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the room? Yes, according to a new paper from UBC’s Building Decisions Research Group. Moreover, researchers found that the more carbon dioxide is present, the less comfortable people are with the temperature.

A rolling stand with a number of sensors attached, measuring factors like temperature, sound, CO2, lighting, and more.

Mobile IEQ measurement station

Before the pandemic, Mechanical Engineering doctoral student Sarah Crosby and UBC SALA’s Assistant Professor Adam Rysanek undertook a field study of 141 office workers at UBC, simultaneously collecting information from individuals through a worker survey and a variety of readings (everything from CO2 and temperature levels, to how much light and sound was present) from a mobile indoor environmental quality (IEQ) measurement station. This information was added to a prior dataset collected by Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) in the early 2000s. The researchers developed a new hierarchical Bayesian logistic regression – a statistical decision-making model for interpreting nuanced observations in data – and applied it to the combined dataset to ensure the results were interpreted accurately. Not only did the they find that the prediction of an occupant’s satisfaction with indoor air temperature can be improved if measurements of CO2 levels are included, but previous observations in this direction had been strengthened with the addition of their new field data as well. The team is making the new data available for public use as part of their paper.

Why is the amount of carbon dioxide in the room related to the occupant’s perception of the temperature? The cause is still unknown, and the authors caution against assuming that there is a causal relationship between them at all. Instead, the correlation may be caused by a third factor such as indoor air quality due to the building design, or the presence of multiple occupants in a room which could increase the amount of CO2 through respiration. More work will be needed to understand why the relationship between CO2 and thermal comfort exists, but the study illustrates the importance of including measurements of non-temperature factors during future thermal comfort studies.

Read “Predicting thermal satisfaction as a function of indoor CO2 levels: Bayesian modelling of new field data” published in Building and Environment at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.108569.

UBC’s Smart Energy District

July 8, 2022

It’s about to change the future.

Article by Chris Petty, from UBC Trek Magazine.

UBC’s Vancouver campus is testing a solar- and hydrogen- driven smart energy system.

If you happen to pass the block bounded by Thunderbird Boulevard and Wesbrook Mall on UBC’s Vancouver campus, take note: you are experiencing history being made.

That block is being transformed into a solar- and hydrogen-driven Smart Energy District, the first project of its kind in the world. It will be developing and testing technologies in a real-world setting, with the goal of providing zero-emission power from sunlight and hydrogen.

Under the direction of Walter Mérida, professor of mechanical engineering and lead of MéridaLabs, the site will include an advanced solar array on top of the existing parking garage, a water electrolyser to produce hydrogen, a hydrogen fueling station for cars and buses, and a bi-directional charging system for electric cars. The project is funded by both private and government sources, and is slated to be up and running by late 2023.

The water electrolyser extracts hydrogen from water using electricity from the solar array and stores it under pressure. This “green” hydrogen (as opposed to “blue” hydrogen, which is extracted from fossil sources) can then be used to produce electricity in a fuel cell or used directly as a fuel in space-heating or automotive applications. The emission from such uses is simply water.

trek50 sustainable cities diagram

Hydrogen as a fuel is also attractive, because it can enable geopolitical stability and energy security. A city-scale testbed.

Affordability, however, is an issue with using hydrogen as a source of power. While it is the most abundant substance in the universe, extracting it from water is a costly process.

“It is still expensive,” Mérida says. “But, in an era of $100 plus for a barrel of oil, it’s not as prohibitive as it was. Costs are coming down drastically as the technology develops. Rapid learning curves for wind, solar, and fuel cell technologies have been accompanied by dramatic cost reductions in the last two decades. The same will happen with hydrogen.”

Hydrogen as a fuel is also attractive, because it can enable geopolitical stability and energy security. As the recent invasion of Ukraine has made clear, dependence on energy sources in politically unstable areas of the world can have disastrous results.

While hydrogen may well be the fuel of the future, technologies need to be developed to harness its potential. To that end, the Smart Energy District will serve as a research platform to test ideas for feasibility and potential economic development. Technologies that emerge will generate economic opportunities much like those generated by the development of renewable energy technologies.

The bi-directional charging system, for instance, which uses batteries in electric cars to both store and distribute energy, enables municipalities to use parkades for city-scale energy storage. In future stages of the project, injecting hydrogen into existing heating systems to replace natural gas has the potential to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. At UBC the natural gas boilers at the Campus Energy Centre, which was already on the project site, provide a significant portion of the heating needs of the university. Using hydrogen as part of that system would have significant impact on UBC’s carbon footprint.

The digital system under development to manage the project is also revolutionary, and will take advantage of the campus’ 5G wireless network. It will oversee every aspect of the project, all the way from generating and storing hydrogen to processing parking fees.

As digital, civil, and energy infrastructures become smart and interconnected, it will be possible to deliver services that minimize environmental damage, promote geopolitical stability, and enable economic diversification.

As the project proceeds, and it’s shown that hydrogen can provide pathways to net-zero energy systems, Mérida sees a bright future ahead. He is in talks with municipalities and corporations around the Lower Mainland and across the country about adopting technologies that develop out of the project.

“We don’t have 100 years to change our energy system,” Mérida says. “We have, at most, two or three decades. This project means to accelerate the process by developing systems that are convenient, clean, and affordable.”