Quanser sponsored 5th Annual Seismic Design Competition

It has become a tradition for Annual Meetings of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) to host Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition - competition opened to all undergraduate civil engineering students. This year, the competition turned out to be one of the major highlights of the EERI Annual Meeting in New Orleans (Feb. 6-9, 2008). 17 competing teams built high-rise buildings that would be tested against an “earthquake” simulated by the Quanser Shake Table. The competition was exciting, educating and not to mention, a lot of fun! Quanser representative, Sunny Ray, had the opportunity to partake in the event as a celebrity judge. “It was fun and inspiring to be a part of this [event]. What impressed me the most was how enthusiastic the students were” says Sunny “and it was reassuring to witness that our company is making a real difference to the lives of engineering students by offering them a hands-on approach to understanding engineering theory.” Michel, one of the lead Quanser engineers at the conference, noticed that students come better prepared with more resilient building models year to year. Michel is on a personal mission to make the competition even more challenging next year – preparing to offer bi-directional (X-Y) motion and a wider, more vicious, variety of earthquake selections! So, teams, get ready for the challenge!

Hybrid Control of Inverted Pendulum with manual Wii swingup

This was done earlier today here at Quanser - our new rapid controls prototyping software QuaRC, has many new features - one of them being drag n' drop Simulink block support for the Nintendo Wii. Here we replaced the energy swing-up portion of the hybrid controller for a classic rotary inverted pendulum with manual control via the Wii.

Customer testimony - Dr. Yongpeng Zhang, Prairie View A&m University, Texas

“Quanser simplified our researchers’ work, and our own programming can be conveniently built on the samples provided. We can now concentrate on the control theory and its algorithm development.”

Dr. Yongpeng Zhang, Assistant Professor, Prairie View A&M University, Texas

2DOF Table

A new module for the Quanser's Rotary Family (SRV02) is coming out soon. It is our first experiment that uses vision system (integrating with Point Grey cameras) to control the movement of the table.

1. Table moves ball in a circular path

2. Table "catches" the ball and centers it

Robotic Arm Project at Harvard - from Dr. Robert Wood

...the robotics course was a hit! The students seemed to get a great deal of insight from programming the arm to do various tasks. we have some pictures and videos from the last lab, check out:

http://seas.harvard.edu/highlights/Roboarm.html

Virtual Rehabilitation 2007 Conference, Venice, Italy

Held in Lido Venice, a small island off the city of Venice, this was certainly a different venue for a conference. On the grounds of the San Camillo hospital, renowned for its pioneering activities in the field of rehabilitation, a tent was setup in an “open concept” fashion with lots of fresh air, and beautiful vegetation. About 150 medical doctors, physiotherapists, engineers, and other health researchers were gathered at Virtual Rehabilitation Conference.

For the event, Quanser teamed up with Teoresi , our distributor in Italy. Product manager Enzo Bergamini from Teoresi, application engineer Michel Levis and channel sales director Martin Lord, both from Quanser, were present at the event.

Our booth was very popular – we had our haptic Telesurgery demonstration system, which included one 6DOF Mirage haptic robot and one 5DOF industrial robot, all controlled from a single PC running Simulink and Quanser’s own WinCon.
The standard demo was to sign one’s name on a sheet of paper secured on a soft sponge, but since we had the right audience, we even experimented with pear surgery!
On video we showed an application of haptics in rehabilitation with a 2DOF robot that we are developing in conjunction with the University of Toronto and the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. You will certainly hear more about this project in the near future.

A beautiful setting indeed – we hope to come back! “Thank you” to the organizing committee for its support during that event.

Quanser products in Colombia

ICL Didáctica Ltda., Quanser’s distributor in Colombia, attended VI Ibero-American Meeting of Engineering Education Institutions on October 17-19, 2007. This event, prepared together with XXVII National Meeting of Engineering Schools, brought representatives of more than 130 universities from Colombia, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Singapor and many other countries to the legendary city of Cartagena. Participants had a chance to see demonstrations of Quanser’s products and learn more about how Quanser equipment can help them and their students. If you did not have a chance to attend this event, you can still find out all that you need on our website http://www.quanser.com/.

To contact ICL, please visit http://www.icl-didactica.com/