How to Change the World...

What do you do when you want to make a difference, to change the world, to make it a better place? You go to the FIRST Robotics Championship, put on a silly hat and take a photo with the sign that says “I will change the world”, of course! And look, that is exactly what I had done recently!

Yours truly making the pledge to change the world!

On the surface, this might look like a joke, with the silly hat and all. But tens of thousands of people gather at the FIRST Robotics Championship with that exact purpose every year for the past 25 years! Our mission is to change the culture in the world we live in: by inspiring our next generation of youth to be involved with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education… through fun and games no less! For those not familiar with FIRST, here is the official introductory video. Personally, I like this one more because of Morgan Freeman.

At the 2014 FIRST World Championship opening ceremony inside the Edward Jones Dome, St. Louis MO

Education is Quanser’s business. So it is not surprising Quanser embraces the FIRST ideals and supports FIRST in numerous ways. At the corporate level, Quanser partners with FIRST Canada to help spread the message of FIRST by sponsoring and mentoring a FRC team, Team 4001 Retro Rams from St. Robert Catholic High School. In addition, Quanser invites other teams, such as Team 771 SWAT and Team 4252 Cardinal Robotics, to our corporate headquarter for onsite visits. These visits usually involve hands-on demonstrations and discussions with our engineers that help to engage and entice the students into careers in STEM. Also, our very own Tom Lee was a keynote speaker at the annual Robotics Symposium hosted by Team 771 SWAT back in the fall of last year.

Dr. Tom Lee giving the keynote speech at the SWAT Robotics Symposium 2013.

Furthermore, Quanser is the Academic Partner with National Instruments. NI is, of course, one of the strategic partners of FIRST and is the supplier of the existing cRIO robot controller and the new roboRIO controller for the 2015 FRC season. The roboRIO is a close cousin of the myRIO platform, which we, at Quanser, have some prior experience with. So personally, I can’t wait to see what we can do with the new roboRIO platform and to share it back to the FIRST community.

Quanser judges and mentors at the FRC Waterloo Regional Competition (left to right): Tom Lee,
Tim Vrablik, Peter Martin, Yona Baskharoun, Safwan Choudhury, and Gilbert Lai.

At the people level, Quanser encourages our employees to be involved with FIRST as part of our outreach activities. Yours truly and fellow Quanser engineers Peter Martin, Safwan Choudhury and Yona Baskharoun are mentor volunteers for FRC teams. Quanser has traditionally supplied ample number of volunteer FRC judges at regional competitions. This year is no exception. We, the FRC mentors, also doubled up as FRC and FLL judges. In fact, there is a record number of Quanser judges (8!) volunteered at five out of the seven Canadian FRC regional events this year. Our fellow Quanser judges include veterans like Tom Lee, Cameron Fulford, Herve Lacheray, and rookies like Keith Blanchet and Tim Vrablik. Representing Quanser at the World Championship in St. Louis this year is yours truly, as a mentor, and Tom Lee, as a judge advisor.

Quanser "Six Pack" at the FRC Greater Toronto Regional East (GTRE) Competition (left to right): Gilbert Lai,
Safwan Choudhury, Peter Martin, Cameron Fulford, Herve Lacheray, and Tom Lee.

As you can see, I have taken this opportunity to share a few of the photos of us at various events this year to show how much fun it was for us. Having fun is great, but more importantly, we know we are contributing to a good cause while we are at it.

Selfie with Herve Lacheray (left) and Tom Lee (right)!

Judges with FIRST founder Dean Kamen at the FRC Montreal Regional Competition. Herve Lacheray (back row, second from the left) and Keith Blanchet (back row, fourth from the left) are Quanser's representations.

On a more personal level, this is my fourth year getting involved with FIRST. Up until this year, my main involvement was being a mentor for an all-girl FRC team, SWAT 771, from St. Mildred’s-Lightbourn School in Oakville, Ontario. Heavily influenced by the veteran judges surrounding me at the Quanser office, I was motivated to volunteer as a judge as well this year. As a rookie judge, I found the experience refreshing and invaluable. The perspective of being a judge is different, yet complementary, to the experience of being a mentor. Not only did I learn a lot from talking to the students of other teams (expanding my horizon), I have gained a lot of experience (and wisdom) from my fellow judges.

More selfie! This time with the banner of my team at the FRC Waterloo Regional Competition.

As a parent to a young child, I was also motivated to start my own Jr. FLL team this year. While the Jr. FLL program is non competitive, the satisfaction in seeing how the young kids learn and explore through Lego and play is enormous. It is truly amazing how the little minds are like sponges, soaking up and learning everything they can. As a geek and engineer, the most fulfilling (and personal favorite) aspect from my Jr. FLL experience this year was teaching them about simple machines. Prior to the simple machine session, I didn’t expect the group would be able to retain a lot from what I was about to teach them. My best hope was perhaps they can recall a couple of the more common and obvious simple machines, like wheels and screws. To my astonishment, they managed to recall all seven of them (We had some debates as to whether there are 6 or 7 simple machines… in the end, we decided to teach all 7 of them: lever, wheel and axle, pulley, incline plane, wedge, screw and gear). In fact, they have now developed a habit of looking out for these simple machines everywhere around them. For example, when we pass by a house, we would stand witness to a very excited child pointing up at the roof and chanting “incline plane” repeatedly; or at the playground pointing at the seesaw and calling out “lever”.

Our Jr. FLL team, the Storm Spinners, showcasing their poster and Lego model at a local Jr. FLL Showcase Event.

What is the lesson learned from all of these experience? When it comes to the education of our youth, never underestimate their capacities to learn and grow, no matter how old they are (especially the younger ones)! FIRST is one of those programs that facilitate a rich and fun environment for the kids to explore and learn. They are learning all of these amazing things without even realizing it. And that is the beauty of the program!

So if you want to change the world like I do, get involved! Volunteer! Or just come out and have fun with us! Hope to see you at a FIRST event soon!

P.S. Congratulations to all of the teams participating in the FRC Aerial Assist game this year! See you again next year!

P.P.S. This year is the 25th anniversary for FIRST. Incidentally, this is also Quanser’s 25th anniversary. To mark the occasion, I brought along the Quanser’s 25th anniversary commemorative jersey with me to St. Louis and put it on our robot in our pit. The SWAT ladies had graciously agreed to pose for the photo. Thanks SWAT!

Quanser was there!

~ Gilbert Lai
Systems, Control and Software Engineer, Quanser

SWAT Visits Quanser

Recently, I, along with a few of my SWAT 771 teammates, came to visit Quanser after Dr. Lai invited us for a tour. Being involved in the FIRST Robotics program and working as an engineer for a career are two completely different things, so to be able to learn the ins and outs of an actual engineering facility was an eye-opening and unforgettable experience.

When we got there, we went into the boardroom to listen to a presentation and learned about what Quanser really was, a global company making innovative machines to make lives easier and more efficient. We also listened to a presentation about how we can make our FRC season run much smoother by Peter Martin, the lead mentor of  Team 4001. Learning about the dynamics and work ethic of teams other than our own was great and gave us a new perspective with which to tackle this season.

Once the presentation was over, Dr Lai and Mr Martin gave us a tour of the facility, where we saw the workshops, research centre and got to look at many innovative projects. The workshop was much larger than the one we get to build our robot, and nearly everyone was speechless. The projects were something else entirely, even though many of us visiting Quanser haven’t had the opportunity to take physics yet (we were Grade 10’s mainly) the projects were still breathtaking. Being a race car driver, my personal favourite was the active suspension that was connected to a computer with a car simulation.

Seeing a day in the life of an engineer was a very great and interesting experience I’m sure SWAT will not forget. With the kick-off to our robotics season coming closer and closer, the knowledge we learned is going to make us a stronger team. Thank you to everyone for letting us into your workplace and hopefully we will keep in touch!

~ Taegen Poles,
SWAT 771
St. Mildred’s-Lightbourn School from Oakville, Ontario 

The Versatile Shake Table I-40: Small Size, Big Impact

The most compact of our three seismic platforms, the Shake Table I-40 can make a sizable impact, both in your lab and at outreach events. Its versatility is the reason why.

The ST I-40 can be used as a portable, tabletop platform for simulating earthquakes and evaluating active mass damper performance. Students will find it a useful, hands-on tool to help them understand the dynamics of real-world structures. Outside the lab, the ST I-40 also doubles as a lightweight, traveling demonstration platform that can bring outreach programs to life and get children thinking about careers in engineering and science.

The Quanser Shake Table I-40 is a single-axis platform for simulating earthquakes and evaluating active mass damper performance.  It is used in undergraduate labs and outreach programs. 

At 7.6 cm high, 57.5 cm long, 12.7 cm wide, and weighing just 5.9 kg, the ST I-40 is easy to set up, even in space-challenged labs. Powerful for its size, it can accelerate a load that weighs 1.5 kg up to 1.0 g. When the ST I-40 is connected to our One-Floor Active Mass Damper, students can perform structural engineering analysis or develop a controller that reduces the deflections of the building while the table is running an earthquake simulation.

The Quanser one-floor Active Mass  Damper can be connected to the ST I-40  to perform structural engineering analysis or develop a controller that reduces a building's deflections during an earthquake.

Good Vibrations for Professors and Students

At the University of Cincinnati’s School of Aerospace Systems, Professor Kelly Cohen has taken full advantage of the ST I-40’s versatility. He uses it to teach vibration control to his undergraduates. He has also integrated the ST I-40 within a remote lab setup that offsite students can use. Once they log on, they can tune different control parameters, view the measured response on the graphical interface and examine the results in real time via webcam. Professor Cohen can also view their data once it’s saved.

An Exciting Outreach Tool

Professor Cohen has put the ST I-40 to work in outreach programs as well, demonstrating earthquake simulations to elementary and high school students. We also have been bringing the ST I-40 to schools and science fairs for years, both on our own and working with science literacy groups such as Let’s Talk Science. 

The ST I-40 is an excellent outreach tool.  Here it is part of an interactive earthquake simulation  presented to schoolchildren by Let's Talk Science.

For professors and for students of all ages, the impact of the ST I-40 can be both far-reaching and real. This versatile and portable earthquake simulator can play a significant role in undergraduate engineering labs. The fact that it is also an exciting demonstration device that can encourage K-12 students to consider studying engineering and the sciences - well, that's just an added bonus. 

A Strong Belief In Hands-On Engineering Brings Quanser and FIRST Together Again

One of our favourite outreach programs is the annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC).  Every year we get involved and participate as individual mentors, judges, and overall as a corporate sponsor.

Why? We agree wholeheartedly with their mission: to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting, mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills.

Last month Dr. Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer, blogged about his recent experience as a FIRST judge advisor, saying it renewed his faith in the younger generation’s inquisitive spirit and sheer engineering skills. Now two Quanser engineers, Peter Martin and Gilbert Lai, talk about their experiences as FIRST mentors this year. Peter has helped mentor the St. Robert Catholic High School team in Thornhill, Ontario for the past two years and Gilbert, who has just joined Quanser, has been mentoring the St. Mildred’s-LightbournGirls School team in Oakville, Ontario for the past three years.  Peter and Gilbert recently got together to discuss their mentoring experiences.

Q:  Before we start, what was the FIRST challenge this year?

Peter: As always, FIRST has an individual component and a three-team alliance component.  Individual school teams competed in building and controlling robots that shot Frisbees into targeted openings for individual awards, which was a lot of fun.  The three-team alliances were formed at the competition to cooperate as a team to achieve the highest possible team score based  on their frisbee shooting abilities plus a special challenge in which the robots had to climb a pyramid.

Quanser's Peter Martin  found the students he mentored at St. Robert High School were quite adept at building and programming their robot. He helped them stay simple and follow a well-thought out design and development process. 

Q:  Outline how you mentored your particular school.

Gilbert:  St. Mildred’s had been in the FIRST competition for many years and I’ve been mentoring them for the past three.  The first thing to note about the St. Mildred girls is that they are very quick learners.  They went from being unsure how to assess a problem and map it out, to identifying and solving problems on their own, without me.  Basically I helped them learn critical thinking, problem solving and project management skills. But their other mentors and I all agree that the girls taught us much more than we taught them.  They already had advanced soft skills in working together as a team and seeking consensus for decision-making.

That helped as they overcame some big challenges. The girls built their robot in spite of significant technical limitations. The school doesn’t have a dedicated workshop and the girls had to improvise and work around that.  It was inspiring and an eyeopener for me.  They outperformed all my expectations.

Peter:  This was only the second year that St. Robert entered a team and my second year helping to mentor them.  So there were some significant differences in our experiences.  For one thing, there’s a great machine shop at St. Robert, so we didn’t have that problem. 

Much of what I did was help the St. Robert team establish the teamwork and organizational skills that St. Mildred’s excelled at.  I helped them stay simple and follow a design and development process.  They learned to break down the project into sub-challenges to build the individual robot components, to be rigorous about documentation and passing along skills to new team members. They also started doing CAD design before bringing everything together to integrate all the parts onto the whole.

I expected to be heavily involved in helping them with software programming, but they often accomplished their work in LabVIEW and Java before I even got there; they just did it themselves.  Quite often I found they didn’t need me.  They took ownership for the project and plowed ahead on their own.

As mentor for St. Mildred's School FIRST Robotics team, Gilbert Lai found the students to possess remarkable ability to work together as a team.  He was struck by how quickly  they learned to ask the right questions and assumed complete ownership of their project. 

Q:  What did the students get out of their involvement with FIRST?

Gilbert:  At St. Mildred’s, the students matured very quickly.  They went from not knowing what they didn’t know to identifying a problem, to finding the right tool or person to address it.  They learned what questions to ask to advance a project.  And they took complete ownership of the project; even the younger students were eventually unafraid to be involved, by getting their hands on the power tools and driving the robots around for testing and competition. 

Peter:  This was a real coming of age year for the St. Robert team.  They encountered a lot more technical challenges than in years past and that was good, because they learned what to do when things don’t go according to plan.  So this was excellent real-world engineering experience, I think.  Overall they also learned how to do engineering as opposed to just doing exercises on paper.  They applied their skills to actually build something that was supposed to work.  They used wrenches and power drills to put parts together.  And they learned why we test things and how to refine things before we get to the finished product. Students coming out of FIRST know it all, everything from using a screwdriver to the specifics of sensor integration.

Q:  Why does Quanser partner with FIRST?

Peter:  We’re passionate about engineering and want to share that passion with students no matter what their age.  Quanser exists to advance engineering education, to help graduate a new generation of engineers with two key abilities: first, to be industry-ready and bring real hands-on engineering experience to the working world; and second, to have the passion and motivation to innovate new solutions to engineering’s grand challenges.

Our methodology says that learning needs to have a hands-on component to be effective.  In other words, a good engineering education starts on paper and continues in the workshop. It involves planning and teamwork, motivating applications, software design, hardware-in-the-loop, prototyping, testing and refining. That’s what the kids participating in FIRST are doing, and that’s why we’re excited to partner with FIRST. 

4001- A Robotic Odyssey Continues

On April 26 to 28, 2012, Quanser-sponsored FIRST Robotics team 4001 from St. Robert high school in Thornhill, Ontario – the Retro Rams – competed in the FIRST championships in St. Louis, MO. They were one of over 400 of the very best FIRST teams in the world and expectedly, the team competed hard and made all of us who worked with them over the season very proud. St. Robert teacher Paul Keenan, one of the faculty advisors for the team, was in St. Louis to witness this milestone event and shares his story. 

I am picking up where Tom Lee left off in his last blog post on the topic of the amazing rookie season of FIRST Robotics team 4001, the St. Robert Retro-Rams. Tom reported on the team winning the Rookie All Star and the championship of the Greater Toronto West Regional, in no small part thanks to the best team in Canada, team 2056 from Stoney Creek, Ontario. In the euphoria of the moment I was handed a pile of paperwork designed to get our robot in its crate to the Edward R. Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri. Small problem… no shipping crate and no money.

Decision Time for the Retro-Rams
Do we go, can we go? Principal Sarna says “Let’s do it” and we swing into action. Monday night teachers, Bob Chirrey and Mike Manning build a crate. Tuesday afternoon FedEx picks up the crate and two days later it is in St. Louis! A couple of phone calls later we have enough money to send a team of 19 kids and some staff to St. Louis on a 15 hour bus ride. 

Rams Rock the “Gateway to the West” 
After choosing some key kids and offering the opportunity to some more hardworking team members and getting some needed visas at the American consulate in Toronto, the team arrived in downtown St. Louis at 1:00 AM,15 hours after leaving Thornhill on Tuesday morning. We had one day to sightsee before the work began later in the day Wednesday. Some headed off to the mall whereas others (me included) went to the St. Louis Science Center. At 4pm Wednesday construction on the pit and testing and inspection of the robot began.

We competed hard on Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning and amassed a winning record on the Archimedes field (one of four field – each had one hundred teams competing!). With a little luck we might have gone 7-2. The drivers made alliances, discussed strategy, made friends, and drove hard. Many times the students were approached on elevators, in food lines and in the pits and recognized. “Oh, you guys are 4001. We saw your game on YouTube. It was the best FIRST match ever!” There was disappointment when our friends from 2056 chose 4334 from Calgary and not us in the playoffs but as I said, “We are here because of 2056 and they owe us nothing. If anything we owe them a debt of gratitude.” Students bounce back as always and were joining the other Canadians in cheering on the alliance of Canadian teams;2056, 1114 and 4334. 

Why We Went  
The nineteen students had a great time and learned a lot along the way. As one team member told another student in my class Monday when asked about the trip, “It was the greatest experience of my life”. The prevalent theme of the competition could be summed up as, “It is great to be a nerd!”. Although to me the kids looked as normal as any teenager it was the adults that caused the double takes from hair and beards dyed red, to grannies dressed as superheroes. I had heard it was life changing but as a jaded old teacher I thought it was hype but when at our parent meeting before we left a mom approached the principal to thank her because she had seen a tremendous positive change in her son since he became involved in the robot team I bought into the hype!

4001: A Robotic Odyssey

I and others have written several times in the past about the FIRST Robotics competition. Through a highly charged and professionally produced competitive framework, teams of high school students from a growing number of countries converge in regional tournaments to demonstrate their engineering excellence.

Although Quanser has supported competitions in the past, this was the first year that we sponsored and mentored our own team. That team was 4001 (the official team identification number designated by the FIRST organization), also known as the Retro Rams, also known as St. Robert High School of Thornhill, Ontario. I’m happy to report that the team far exceeded everyone’s expectations, and we’re all still catching our breaths.

Members of Team 4001 follow their robot as it takes on all challengers.

On March 30th and 31st, our Rams competed in the Greater Toronto West Regional tournament. This year 52 teams from around Canada, the US, and Mexico competed in one of the largest regional tournaments in the FIRST roster. The Rams are classified as a “rookie” team indicating that this was there first year of competition. Spoiler alert: they won.



The concept of winning has multiple meanings within the FIRST context and the Rams won in all senses.

They won the Rookie All Star Award.
A select team of engineering community leaders are recruited as expert judges to identify teams of exceptional and exemplary character and embodiment of what FIRST refers to as “Gracious Professionalism” – the notion that engineering excellence encompasses technical achievement and true leadership within the community and in their interaction with other teams. The Rookie All Star Award is the most prestigious award for first year teams and celebrates the team’s success in bringing students, teachers, community, and industry together to learn about engineering and to succeed in engineering.

They won on the field.
FIRST is unique in that the field competition always involves alliances of three separate teams. In the initial qualifying rounds, the alliances are selected at random. In the playoffs, the top 8 teams (based on a fairly sophisticated points scheme) hand pick their desired alliance partners for the playoff rounds. Among the top 8 were one of the best teams anywhere, 2056, OP Robotics of Governor Simcoe High School in St. Catharines, Ontario and they selected the Rams as their first choice as a playoff alliance partner. A rookie team being chosen first is very rare and to be chosen by a perennial powerhouse team is even rarer.

A spectacular Triple Balance, brought to you by Team 4001, the St. Robert High School
Retro Rams. To catch more of the action, click here.

The design was exceptional.
Design is a wonderfully ethereal concept celebrated by the engineering profession and encompasses far more than the fanciest machine. Design is the discipline of making intelligent choices to optimally achieve key functional goals and sometimes the best designs are the most focused and simple. Most rookie teams bolt every last thing on their robot in a desperate attempt to do as much as possible. The Rams focused at being small and robust, maximizing their chance to be chosen by a senior team. This year, there was a unique element in the game that required robots to balance on a single fulcrum bridge. Many can balance one. Some can do two. Only the most innovative trio of robots can do three. This year the Rams became that “King Maker” that facilitates consistent triple balances and this allowed the final alliance to win on the field.

Team 4001 consists of over 50 students who gained valuable experience in
dealing with complex, multidimensional, real-world challenges.

The students became true professionals.
In many ways this is the most important win. Over 50 students joined the team with little or no experience in FIRST, robotics, engineering, or anything more complex than your typical teenage endeavor. Through commitment, positive attitude, and plenty of basic smarts, they engineered a complex organization of technical teams, business teams, outreach teams, and more. They learned what it takes to take on ambitious multidimensional challenges in the real world.

Quanser won
This was the first time that any of us had mentored a FIRST team. I had been part of the judging community for years but I had never had a direct connection to a specific team. The rewards for us was the satisfaction of seeing our modest input have such a profound impact. The best thing was that we really did not do much. We helped them clarify their goals, offer them basic advice on how to navigate all the different paths ahead of them, and then we stood back and let the team do its thing. In many ways, our doing so little meant that that little bit that we did do was incredibly important. To all you Quanser mentors with young families, take note.

Quanser's Director of Engineering Paul Karam and Systems Control Manager Cameron Fulford are
just two of the Quanser engineers who did some early mentoring of Team 4001.

I have a fundamental belief on topics of education. If you start with bright, motivated kids, you can achieve the impossible and our educational strategy should take advantage of that. Sometimes I wonder whether we do too much to massage the learning environment to make it more “suitable” for them. This year’s FIRST odyssey reaffirmed that if you have ambition, are willing to work hard, and work closely with your peers, magic can happen. Thank you 4001 for providing us this valuable life lesson.
- Tom Lee

As Chief Education Officer at Quanser, Tom Lee is focused on spearheading the development of Quanser's global academic community. He is closely involved with Quanser's technology and solution development process and the company's partner and alliance programs. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and an MASc and BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Quanser Exposes Students to Real-World Challenges In Sustainable Engineering

If you’re a regular visitor to our engineering blog, you already know about the Quanser Challenge, the unique, ISTEC-based global student competition to design new approaches to teaching sustainable engineering.

The appeal of this competition is simple: it will enhance students’ industry-ready skills by exposing them to the complexities of real world engineering design while they’re still in school. It’s also a chance to use the kind of powerful, industry-based tools they’ll be working with after graduation, equipment like data acquisition boards from a leading company like National Instruments and related tools from Quanser.  Ultimately the Quanser Challenge gives students a golden opportunity to put their thinking caps on and help advance the cause of sustainable engineering. Little wonder we feel that everyone who has entered this competition will be a winner, since the exercise is so relevant to real-world needs and experiences.

Watch the short video as Tom Lee, Quanser's Chief Education Officer, outlines the benefits of the Quanser Challenge and offers participating students some basic tips on achieving the best possible results. 

The Six Stages of a FIRST Time Mentor

Beginning in January of this year, I had the opportunity to volunteer to mentor a FIRST Robotics team at St. Robert CHS. I had only a vague idea of what I was getting into, but the videos that I had see online seemed to be filled with manic high school students almost euphoric with excitement and passion for robotics. Anything that could get high school students that excited about learning about geeky things like programming, sensors and mechanical engineering was something I wanted to be a part of (spoiler alert: I’m a huge nerd).

A (very) short two months later, a robot was born and I had identified the six stages of mentoring a FIRST team:

Stage One – The elementary school dance: The high school dance is a ubiquitous analogy. Students and mentors grouped around a room, mostly keeping to the relative safety of our individual peers. Some brave students and mentors came together to dance around the topic of what the heck this robot was actually supposed to do...and how?

Quanser's engineeering and production mentors helped the project get off to a great start,
laying the foundation for the students to build on.

Stage Two – The sermon: The classic paradigm of teachers preaching to a class of students has existed for as long as time. Unfortunately, it has become so engrained in the educational psyche that old habits die hard. Having been intimidated by a room full of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students, we mentors may have fallen back into our comfort zone. The beautiful part about FIRST, however, is that you can’t lecture for long. There’s work to be done. The build team and our crack production mentors went to work on getting a head start on the build, prompting the rest of the mentors to get our hands dirty.

Stage Three – Shock and awe: This stage was the real turning point for the mentors, and to a certain extent the project overall. As the students got down to work, we mentors started to realize just how talented, bright, and capable they were. I will never forget walking into the shop on a Saturday afternoon to help get the control system up and running, only to find out that it was already pretty much complete. As our confidence in the students grew, and the students’ confidence in themselves was reinforced, the project really took off as the students began to invest their hearts into the project.

The students quickly took over the project,
while the mentors stepped back into a supporting role.

Stage Four – Tool rack: As the students took over the project, we moved into the culminating stage of the build process. In this stage the students took an active role in the construction and design of key elements of the robot. At the same time we mentors began to take a more passive role: holding a tool here, lending a hand there, and only occasionally interjecting with a friendly piece of advice. I really started to feel like I was a part of their team, and that we were all in it together.

Stage Five – Pride: As the robot came together and “bag day” approached, I was really struck by the overwhelming pride I felt in what the students had achieved. I think that the team did an amazing job, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

The students eventually took control of the project and became fully involved
 in the construction and design of key elements of the robot.

Stage Six – Repeat: As the competition day draws closer, talk around the Quanser office seems to be turning more and more to the subject to FIRST. Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone mentioning competition results, interesting robot designs, strategies, etc. I can’t wait until next year’s build, and I know the other mentors feel the same way too. Go 4001!

Quanser Challenges Engineering Students to Create an Experiment to Teach Sustainable Engineering

--> Quanser recently announced sponsorship of a unique global design student competition, the Quanser Challenge, where engineering students devise an approach to teaching concepts in sustainable engineering.

To launch this competition, Quanser is collaborating with the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC), the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development (SPEED) and the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES). Students entering the competition will be tasked with developing an experiment applied to solving challenges in sustainable engineering while enhancing the undergraduate-level learning experience. Specifically, students will be focused on developing this experiment as an extension of the QNET range of control experiments for the National Instruments’ ELVIS.

The winning entry could subsequently become a university-level Quanser teaching experiment used in engineering faculties around the world. This educational solution would better prepare thousands of engineering students to tackle real-world problems in sustainable engineering and make the prospect of a diverse range of future solutions in this field more viable.

“We’re betting that the global community of engineering students can channel their unique perspectives and youthful passion to create teaching tools that will help their peers develop skills that could literally save the planet, “says Paul Gilbert, Quanser’s CEO. “Their problem-solving capabilities are enormous and we want to help bring them to the surface.”

Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer is also anticipating the results of the competition. “We’ll get to work with some very bright young people who have both the energy and audacity to propose wonderfully creative if not outrageous ideas; so outrageous that they might actually work!”

The deadline for registration of design projects is April 1, 2012. Projects must be submitted by August 1, 2012. The winner will be announced September 1, 2012. Prizes include a trip to the World Engineering Education Forum, October 15 – 18, 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the benefits that accrue from recognition as worldwide winners within the global engineering community.

For further information on contest guidelines and registration, visit http://www.istec.org/2012-student-contest/

Winning in Education

In many ways, those of us who are active in the many current initiatives in improving engineering education are united on one particular idea: a curriculum over-dependent in conventional theory-based lecture format cannot provide a sufficiently rich enough experience to prepare today's students for tomorrow's engineering challenges. And in our efforts, we have posed numerous enrichments and alternatives. In recent years one of the most popular ways of injecting vitality into education has been the student competition. Students, either individually or as a team, compete to achieve a complex engineering task. Arguably some of the most exciting and effective among competitions are those that draw participants from multiple universities and even across international borders and then pit them against a really wicked problem. Some of the most prominent examples include the World Solar Challenge for cars with intercontinental range that run exclusively on solar power, and the US Department of Energy's Solar Decathalon to design a cheap, comfortable house that generates more power than it consumes.

Quanser has always been a proud supporters of such competitions. In terms of competition sponsorship, this year is turning out to be the most active ever in our company's history. We are mentoring and sponsoring our own FIRST Robotics team (Team 4001 RetroRams in case you are interested), we have established the Quanser Award in the University of Waterloo senior mechatronics project competition, and very recently, we, in collaboration of the Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) and the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development (SPEED), launched the Quanser Challenge. A global student competition that presents a real-world engineering challenge to students. For this year, the theme is the design of experimental devices for teaching sustainable engineering.



Tom Lee, Quanser's Cheif Education Officer, considers attempting the Quanser Student Design Challenge to design an experimental device for teaching sustainable engineering using a Quanser QNET trainer board for the National Instruments ELVIS.

Given some fairly constrained technical specifications on form, dimension, power available, and factoring in cost and ease of manufacture and commercialization potential, students will be attempting to develop innovative ideas for a new generation product that could potentially become a future Quanser product. Of course there is a prize.… a trip to Buenos Aires in October to attend and be celebrated at the annual World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF). But the real prize will be in the experience gained in unraveling a very complex engineering and business problem. The first obvious challenge is to define what "sustainable engineering" actually is! Yes everyone talks about it these days but there seems to be as many definitions of the term as there are people mentioning it. Then there will be human factors such as designing for engaging learning experiences. The business factors for global adoption must also be addressed. And after all of this, you still need to actually figure out the nuts and bolts - or the resistors and capacitors - of the design. A student team that actually manages to resolve all of these complex elements are winners in every sense of the word.

Who else wins? Well, we do. If this works, Quanser gets the inside track on a great new idea and we'll get to work with some very bright young people who have both the energy and audacity to propose wonderfully creative if not outrageous ideas.… so outrageous that it might actually work. When you are 49 years old, often floating haplessly on a vast sea of client emails, technical debates, Outlook reminders, management meetings, and the all too frequent calls on your mobile including "Dad.… I know you're in Markham, 120km away from home but I forgot my science project in the basement and the presentation is in 30 minutes", it's challenging to get your mind into that innovation zone. So getting the global community of bright young students to expend their mental energies seems so sensible to me. Heck, I'll go to Buenos Aires to shake the winning hand.

We're actually very excited about the prospects of the Quanser Challenge. It's one thing simply to hand over money as a sponsor for a worthy activity. But actually working directly with the competitors and having a real stake and philosophical interest in a event will be a winning experience for all of us at Quanser. In the end, we hope that this competition leaves another cohort of students with a sense of genuine achievement and satisfaction, and another profound memory of their time as students.

- Tom Lee

As Chief Education Officer at Quanser, Tom Lee is focused on spearheading the development of Quanser's global academic community. He is closely involved with Quanser's technology and solution development process and the company's partner and alliance programs. He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and an MASc and BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Controls Experiment ROTPEN QNET on NI ELVIS Wows Grade 8 Girls Interested in Engineering

Every year, Blair McKay, the electronics teacher at Listowel District Secondary School, invites Grade 8 students to his custom-designed electronics lab. During the electronics workshops - eDays - the students can find out more about electronics and robotics and engage in hands-on activities.

The eDays are held separately for boys and girls so the students are less constrained by gender stereotypes. Girls in particular seem more confident and enthusiastic when they aren’t worried about what the boys are thinking. For the girls eDay, the guest speakers are all women who have exciting careers in electrical engineering, computer engineering and mechatronics.

I have been a guest speaker at eDays since 2004. This year, I talked to the girls about how much fun I have working at Quanser, and I showed them one of our co-developed teaching solutions, Quanser's QNET Rotary Inverted Pendulum Trainer (ROTPEN QNET), which integrates with the National Instruments ELVIS II platform. It's designed to captivate young minds interested in understanding the basic self-balancing principles used in space flight. The girls were impressed that the trainer could balance a vertical rod on the tip of a rotating arm, especially after Blair McKay demonstrated how difficult it is to balance a ruler on the tip of his finger! 

Grade 8 students get a closer look at the ROTPEN QNET (inverted pendulum) experiment in order to gain a better understanding of  the self-balancing principles used in space flight.

“The goal of these workshops,” says Blair, “is to encourage young people to consider careers in electronics, robotics and computer engineering. It is a pleasure to have Heidi be a part of the girls eDay program. She always does a great job, sharing her passion for engineering. It is evident to everyone present that she enjoys working at Quanser. The fact that she is able to demonstrate some of Quanser's really cool products is an added bonus. My only regret with having her at Listowel District Secondary School is that she never leaves behind any of her toys!”

The eDay workshops are clearly successful at attracting young women to take electronics in high school. At Listowel District Secondary School, Grade 9 electronics is taught as part of an Introduction to Technology class, and there are typically two full all-girl classes!

Quanser Helps High School Team Prepare for Robotics Competition

St. Robert Catholic High School in Markham, Ontario, Canada is entering as a “rookie” team in the 2012 FIRST Robotics Canada Competition – and Quanser is proud to be the school's sponsor. To get better acquainted with the students, we invited them, along with students from St. Brother Andre High School, to a kickoff meeting at Quanser's Markham headquarters in December of 2011.

Mark Breadner, Executive Director of FIRST Canada, sponsor of the FIRST Robotics Competition, gives the students an idea of the excitement and learning opportunities they'll experience as they take part in the competition. 

Students from St. Robert and also from St. Brother Andre High Schools in Markham, Canada attended this "get acquainted" session and had plenty of questions for our engineers during a Q &A session.

A student gets her hands on a tele-robotic system that relates to a wide range of real-world applications, including everything frorm handling nuclear waste disposal to performing remote surgery.

Getting their hands on a mobile robot as it performs a variety of tasks is valuable experience for students who'll be building their own robot in the 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition.

Once here, they jumped at the opportunity to control our robots, talk to real engineers as well as Mark Breadner, Executive Director of FIRST Robotics Canada, and feel the excitement that’s part of a life in engineering innovation.

View the video and experience it from the kids’ point of view!

Quanser Hosts Two FIRST Robotics High School Teams To Help Them Envision Engineering Careers

What in the world could make twenty Markham, Ontario high school students get up at the crack of dawn and attend an off-campus event before starting a full day of classes? How about the chance to control unmanned vehicles, network with Quanser engineers—and get a closeup view of what a 21st century engineering career can look like?

The students from St. Robert Catholic High School and St. Brother André Catholic High School were here at our invitation because they had entered the upcoming 2012 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), with Quanser sponsoring and mentoring the St. Robert team.

Students, teachers and Quanser engineers meet and mingle to get the day underway.

The day began with an informal get acquainted session and light breakfast for the students, teachers and Quanser staff. After official greetings from Tom Lee, Quanser’s Chief Education Officer, everyone moved over to a presentation area where Tom gave an illustrated talk titled, “What Is Engineering?” In just a few minutes, he explained how broad, individualized and varied an engineering career could be.

Tom Lee, Quanser's Chief Education Officer, delivers a motivational presentation titled 'What Is Engineering?"

The next speaker was Mark Breadner, Executive Director of FIRST Canada, which will host the 2012 Robotics Competition. Mark spoke about the exciting learning possibilities that the students would experience once the competition was underway, and of how today’s experience at Quanser would help the students prepare for it.

Mark Breadner, Executive Director of FIRST Canada, explains how enjoyable and involving the upcoming FIRST Robotics Competition will be for the St. Robert and St. Brother Andre teams.

The students formed into three groups: “Captivate”, “Motivate” and “Educate”, named after the three key benefits of Quanser products and solutions, and headed over to the demonstration areas to get their hands on the robotic equipment. The demo stations featured the Quanser Driving Simulator, designed to teach undergraduate students control fundamentals; the HD^2 haptic device, which introduced students to a robotic tool that incorporates the sense of touch; and an unmanned ground vehicle that could autonomously navigate, detect and collect specified objects.

Each demo area was manned by a Quanser engineer who introduced the students to the equipment, described its functions and real-world applications, then put it through its paces. After that, the students were given the opportunity to control the equipment for themselves.

A future engineer tries her hand at the Quanser Driving Simulator.

It takes a moment to get used to the touch and feel of the HD^2 haptic device.

A student takes the controls of the Quanser Unmanned Ground Vehicle.

Once every group had experienced all three demo areas, everyone reconvened in the presentation area for a lively Q&A session with an all-star panel - Quanser engineers and managers who specialize in robotics and mechatronics, software development, non-linear control, engineering management, educational materials for engineering programs, as well as business roles such as marketing management. Each panelist explained his or her role at Quanser, how they came to be engineers, and what appealed to them about working for a technology company.

Quanser engineers and management staff answer questions about pursuing engineering careers.

Students wanted to learn all they could about the engineering possibilities that await them.

How did it all go over? As one student put it, “It’s interesting to visit Quanser because this is where the actual engineering and innovation gets done. It’s definitely an advantage for us to experience an engineering company first hand.”

St. Robert Principal Jennifer Sarna summed up the day as well. “We were thrilled to come to a real engineering facility, to see what it’s like to be a real engineer and to have the classroom come to life. Our students are very lucky to work with the engineers from Quanser as they prepare for the FIRST Robotics competition next March.”

Everyone at Quanser is looking forward to working closely with the St. Robert team as they prepare for the FIRST Robotics Competition starting in January 2012. Stay tuned for posts in the coming months from Quanser mentors as they detail the St. Robert students’ progress.

Quanser unleashes robots and unmanned vehicles for FIRST Robotics high school teams to promote careers in engineering

Twenty high school students from two Markham area high schools will get to spend a morning with professional engineers experiencing innovative technology that could inspire them to choose exciting careers in engineering. Quanser will host students from St. Robert Catholic High School and Saint Brother Andre Catholic High School at our headquarters in Markham on Friday, December 16, 2011 at 7:00 am.

"Our young visitors will get a chance to control robots and learn firsthand about what it is like to be an engineer,” says Paul Gilbert, Quanser CEO. “The students will manipulate a driving simulator, interact with a robot used for remote surgical procedures, and control an unmanned ground vehicle as it completes a specific mission. They’ll also have plenty of opportunities to mingle with Quanser engineers and ask questions about the technology or what it is like to be an engineer.”
 

Both high schools will participate in the upcoming 2012 FIRST Robotics Championships, with Quanser sponsoring the St. Robert student team. The student teams will have six weeks to design, build, and program a 140-pound robot to compete against other high school teams in a high stakes, no-holds barred, robotics competition solving real-world challenges. They will be aiming to earn a place in the World Championship competition this April in St. Louis, Missouri.

“FIRST Robotics Canada is proud to partner with companies like Quanser. Our mission is to inspire young people to pursue further studies and careers in the fields of science, technology and engineering. Our vision is of a world which celebrates success in science, technology and engineering and in which young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes” says Mark Breadner, Executive Director, FIRST Robotics Canada.

The principal of St. Robert, Jennifer Sarna, also appreciates Quanser’s involvement. “By opening their doors to us, Quanser is allowing our students to gain a hands-on understanding of what it means to be a professional engineer, working in a state of the art facility, as part of a company that prides itself on innovation and inspiration."

The robotics that the students will be getting their hands on is currently being used by more than 2000 universities worldwide to captivate and motivate engineering students and produce graduates and researchers with industry-relevant skills and a zest for innovation. The visiting students will gain insight in to how exciting an engineering career can be. Quanser, recently voted Markham’s “most innovative company” by the Markham Board of Trade, strongly supports outreach programs that encourage young minds to pursue math, science and engineering education.