April 10, 2019
Student engineering solutions in the spotlight at Capstone
Protecting honey bees, by using technology to leave them alone.
As examples of how engineering can make the world a better place, a pair of bee preservation projects were among the inventions generating a buzz at the Schulich School of Engineering’s annual Capstone design fair on April 2.
“Our system is designed to monitor hive conditions continuously throughout all seasons, wirelessly sending internal hive data along with a visual stream to the beekeeper,” explains Dylan Hofer, part of the quartet of students behind Team HiveMind.
No-disturb model benefits bees
It’s no secret bees are struggling to survive in recent years, and while disease, parasites and pesticides can impact the pollinating insect, it’s also known that opening commercial bee hives for inspection is also a major stress.
Enter engineering students from the University of Calgary, using technology to monitor hive health via weight, temperature and entrances that can become blocked during the annual winter drone die-off.
“Unless harvesting or in an emergency, the beekeeper doesn’t need to physically interact with the hive, so bees can live happy and healthy, undisturbed,” says Hofer.
One of more than 115 engineering projects
The bee saving designs (the other entry was Team NewBee's Hive Observation System) were among more than 115 engineering projects and inventions at the Canadian Natural Resources Limited Engineering Complex on display for students, faculty and members of the public.
The fair gives all fourth-year Schulich students a chance to show off their academic prowess with a real-world engineering solution, providing creative answers to problem posed by professors, industry, and the students themselves.
Leadership and teamwork
“This is an opportunity to take the skills they’ve learned over the past four years as undergraduate students and put them to work on real-world problems, using leadership, teamwork and communication skills,” says Dr. Bob Brennan, PhD, head of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.
“The ideas we see here are often amazing, and we’ve seen them go on to be commercialized, or taken further as research projects.”
Congratulations to the following winners of the 2019 Engineering Design Fair:
Chemical Engineering
First Place:
400 kTa Propane Dehydrogenation (PDH) Facility
Sahil Daroch, Chinmoy Ayachit, Akhilesh Chhetry, Lucas Duque
Second Place:
Fuels from Plastic Waste
Natasha Born, Farhana Karim, Claire Delaney, Fatima Qureshi, Dylan Bowersock
Petroleum Engineering
First Place:
Surmont SAGD Non-Condensable Gas Optimization
Ryan Kiley, Sam Sajedy, Kyle Snow, Tianren Zhang
Second Place:
Development of Gull Lake Central Upper Shaunavon
Pankti Shah, Logan Gray, David Nguyen, Steven Taylor, Kush Bhatt
Civil Engineering
First Place:
GNWT Hodgson Creek Bridge
Ryan Page, Andres Capobianco, Jeffery Leung, Maham Tahir, Harman Sandu
Second Place:
Stability Assessment of Roxboro Landslide
John Yakielashek, Jocelyn Prince, Savely Foline, Claire Gillis, Jun Wei Ooi
Electrical Engineering
First Place:
Microdrop: A Multi-Analyte Portable Detection System for Biofluids
Savitri Butterworth, Thomas Lijnse, Ken Loughery, Katrin Smith, Brendon Besler
Second Place:
Drone Supported Acoustic Mapping Platform
Luke Renaud, Garnet Tanner, Mahipaul Tak, Matthew Wiens
Software Engineering
First Place:
InTrak - Indoor Localization
Quinn Bischoff, Aidan Bailey, Ruble Sandhu, Rajat Singh, Alex James, Raavi Mehta
Second Place:
PhysioRange
Adnan Husain, Adrian Chan, Daniel Velasco, Eric Matteucci, Fernando Valera
Geomatics Engineering
First Place:
Indoor Positioning using Ultra-Wideband Ranging System
Paul Gratton. Jamie Horrelt, Jeffrey Plett. Kate Pexman
Second Place:
Robot Monitoring to Enhance Maintenance Efficiency
Ching Tam, Deanna Ip, Lucas Hossack, Shuet-Ching, Christina Lo
Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
First Place:
Modular Lower Body Negative Pressure (LBNP) System
Emily Dawson, Loretta Ko, Divi Mangla, Cameron McDonald, Matthew Milne, Yuyang Pan
Second Place:
Enhanced Drivetrain for Off-Road Vehicles
Abdullah Alsaedi, Lindsay Hiendl, Diego Ruiz Burgos, Ryan Mensik, Jephson Stirling, Scott Webber
Multidisciplinary and Entrepreneurial Engineering
First Place:
The Additive Lathe - Cylindrical 3D Printer with Continuous Carbon Fiber Extrusion
Evan Jacobs, Mingrui Tong, Nicholas Elderfield, Vicky Liu, Curtis Woods, Jonathan Lo, Sojhal Brochal. Richard Nguyen
Second Place:
Instrument Basket for Sterilization of Gynecological Instruments
Nicole Bowal, Lauren Brown, Mikeala MacDonell, Gideon Mentie, Parker Nesdoly, Amelia Woodard