Quanser Helps a Client to Significantly Elevate UAV’s Performance

Recently a longtime Quanser client asked us to help them enhance the capabilities of the Hexakopter –XL, a third party unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed by Mikrokopter in Germany. Our Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) team received the Hexakopter –XL in kit form and quickly assembled it. While similar in some ways to our own Qball UAV, the Hexakopter, as its name implies, has six rotors, instead of the four on the Qball.

The client chose the 6-rotor Hexakopter because they needed a UAV that could carry heavier payloads than traditional four rotor aerial vehicles. This Hexakopter model is rated to carry a load of up to one kilogram. While many in the hobbyist market would adapt UAVs like this to perform aerial photography functions, our client’s mandate to us was to turn it into a heavy-lifting autonomous flying robot!

Quanser Systems and Control Engineer John Daly  performs a last-minute check
on the enhanced, third party, 6-rotor Hexakopter.

Once assembled, we put the Hexakopter through its paces to familiarize ourselves with its capabilities. Then we went to work enhancing it to suit the client’s needs. Our first task was to refine its controls. Thanks to QUARC real-time control prototyping software and Quanser’s data acquisition hardware, we outfitted the Hexakopter with a HiQ avionics board, just like the Qball. This allowed us to make use of much of the Qball’s control systems technology and fly the Hexakopter completely autonomously in an indoor environment.

We then proceeded to our second functional enhancement – enabling it to plot a destination. Off the shelf, the Hexakopter comes with the ability to stabilize its own attitude. This means it is able to ensure that it remains roughly level when it is flying, but it is not able to travel to a particular location. By using our own QUARC rapid prototyping control design software, we added this function to the Hexakopter. With this added destination-seeking capability, the Hexakopter will be turned into a fully autonomous flying vehicle that can travel from point A to point B to point C and so on.

A view of the Quanser HiQ avionics board that helped enhance the capabilities
of our client's Hexakopter.

Working with real-time control design available through QUARC software, and adapting aspects of our proprietary Qball hardware, Quanser control systems engineers played a key role in extending the functionality of the 6-rotor UAV. Our client’s Hexakopter now features advanced functionality and design that is able to satisfy their higher expectations. Who says every task has to begin with a blank sheet of paper! Check back with this blog in the near future when we tell you about our upcoming autonomous flight results.

- John Daly

John Daly is a Systems and Control Engineer at Quanser headquarters in Markham, Ontario, Canada

Quanser Appoints First Channel Manager Dedicated Exclusively to India and South Asia

Quanser is pleased to announce the appointment of Sunny Ray as Quanser’s first Channel Manager for South Asia. This appointment not only reflects the growth and vitality of engineering education in the region, but demonstrates Quanser’s commitment to supplying full service and support to the Indian and South Asian academic engineering community.


Sunny Ray (far right), Quanser's new and very first Channel Manager for South Asia, with visitors to the Quanser Center of Excellence at the College of Engineering, Pune, India.

Sunny holds a BSc. in Electrical Engineering. His previous roles at Quanser have included Inside Sales Manager, North America Academic Solutions Advisor and Latin America Channel Manager. Consequently, he possesses a strong technical understanding of Quanser solutions. In his previous roles within Quanser Sunny assisted top universities around the globe and enabled engineering educators and researchers to tackle grand challenges in the field of controls, robotics and mechatronics.

Sunny is ready to work with the academic engineering community in his region:

• To help choose lab equipment for your Control, Mechatronics, Robotics, Aerospace, or Civil Engineering courses
• To provide samples of course materials that come with all Quanser lab solutions
• To arrange demonstrations of experiments that improve learning outcomes

Both Quanser and Sunny look forward to working closely with leading edge educators to attract, retain and graduate a new generation of engineering students in your country.

Sunny can be contacted at sunny.ray@quanser.com

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.

Partnership helped our engineers speed development

Partnerships are important factors in allowing us to develop leading edge teaching and research tools for engineering educators. Our partnership with MapleSoft is a prime example of this. A case in point occurred when we were developing the Qball-X4 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), an experimental indoor platform for research in UAV control and design. Quanser engineers relied on MapleSim™ modeling and simulation software to explore the dynamics of the gyroscopic effects of the spinning parts of the QBall. They did so rigorously, and in a surprisingly short amount of time. Read more about how our engineers used MapleSim™ here.

Qball-X4 model developed using MapleSim.

Working closely with our partners and their products is something we do every day. National Instruments is another valued Quanser partner and their LabVIEW™ software is growing in popularity among the tools that our engineers use for controls development. We’ll reveal more about how LabVIEW is being used for controls development in upcoming issues of our monthly newsletter. Till then we tip our hat to MapleSoft, National Instruments and all our partners and look forward to working with them further to serve the needs of the engineering education community.

A special visitor at the Quanser Center of Excellence at CoE Pune

The Quanser Center of Excellence at the College of Engineering Pune (CoEP), India officially opened its door only few months ago, but it is already getting international attention and proves its role as a regional - and international - hub of engineering collaboration and innovation. As such, it was an important stop for the delegates of the India Mission 2012, a joint business mission of the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) and the Town of Markham led by Mayor of Markham Frank Scarpitti.

Welcomed by the Director of the CoEP, Dr. A.D. Sahasrabudhe, Mayor Scarpitti and the delegates toured the college campus and laboratories. "The Quanser Center of Excellence is a regional hub of engineering education and expertise for knowledge dissemination and collaboration," Oye!Times quoted Carolina Moretti, Markham Councillor and Chair of the Economic Development Committee. "Quanser built a laboratory that supports everything from teaching basic engineering concepts to enabling advanced research in aerospace, robotics, mechatronics, structural dynamics and other engineering fields." CoEP is proud to be the first institution in India to host the Quanser Center of Excellence, and is ready to share its knowledge, expertise and best practices in engineering education with other institutions in the region.

Frank Scarpitti, Mayor of Markham, Ontario is welcomed at the College of Engineering Pune by its Director, Dr. A.D. Sahasrabudhe.

The drive for innovation is what CoEP and the Town of Markham share - with close to 900 high-technology and life sciences companies, Markham is known as Canada's high-technology capital. Growing the next generation of innovators is where Dr. Sahasrabudhe and Mayor Scarpitti see the potential for the future cooperation, focusing on various student-centric programs.

Mayor Scarpitti toured the Quanser Center of Excellence at CoEP, a regional hub of engineering expertise and collaboration.

 The visit by the delegation from Canada to the Quanser Center of Excellence at CoEP was short, but confirms the words of Paul Gilbert, CEO of Quanser: "A Quanser Center of Excellence will become a focal point of creative collaboration and best practices in engineering education. It will quickly become a magnet of information and inspiration for other institutions in the region."

Delegates of the Mission India 2012 during their visit at the Quanser Center of Excellence at CoEP.

Bridges To Better Engineering Education

I often use the metaphor of the bridge when I speak on many of our projects at Quanser. Not only is it entirely appropriate and colorful for an engineering audience but it is a very useful metaphor when one discusses some of the most pressing challenges in global engineering education. Take for example, the challenge of building a strong conceptual and experiential bridge between the typical high school experience and the typical university program in engineering. It is true that most preparatory high school curricula will include the fundamental sciences and mathematics and the idea has always been the first year university curriculum will build upon this foundation using its own math and science courses. Following that would be the series of application courses which will take the student from the abstract to the concrete.

Bridging the gap between high school and university is essential.
The reality is that many engineering educators are experiencing significant disconnects between the high school experience and the university expectations. For them, this is a chasm that must be bridged. The consequences of doing nothing are actually quite severe. Not only is enrollment into the Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) programs dropping in many jurisdictions, but the retention rate once students arrive is also disconcerting. Many universities have reported on the order of a third or more of these students dropping out or changing majors. These issues of qualified student recruitment and retaining the intellectual and emotional connection with young students on-campus is the highest priority challenges for many institutions.

Extra-curricular engineering experiences in high school are valuable.
Over the past week, I had the opportunity to meet and explore bridge-building ideas with individuals who are neck-deep into this very murky situation.

First stop was St. Louis to attend the annual Judge Advisor training session of the FIRST Robotics program. The Judge Advisor is the chief judge of each of the regional competitions as well as a participating judge in the national championships. Our group consists of primarily senior professionals from industry with a few forward-looking professors in the mix. All of us are volunteers and all of us believe in the positive benefit of a highly charged and ambitious extra-curricular engineering experience for high school students. The Judging Team is responsible for encouraging and rewarding those teams who not only excel in the technical dimensions of the competition but also the "big picture" aspects of engineering including ethics, entrepreneurship, and societal responsibility. At the annual training sessions, we converge, learn about changes in the competition, and most importantly, we welcome and train the cohort of new Judge Advisors who have been recruited during the previous year.

Alan and Cindy, Chief Judge Advisor for FIRST, moderate one of the more controversial moments during the sesson: "Why is it so bloody cold in St. Louis and how do we move next year's session to Hawaii"?

I'd like to report that we made huge progress and launched outrageous new ideas that will propel FIRST to new heights … but I can't. For the most part it was fairly well-organized and no-nonsense. The reality is, the FIRST concept works. It has found the formula for triggering a passion among an entire generation of young people who may not have had any opportunity to experience real world science and engineering. And it has also successfully integrated a richly multidimensional framework that promotes the complete experience and not just making robots dance. The annual training weekend is really a chance for us to reaffirm our belief and commitment to the values of FIRST and with a bit of luck come up with a few clever ideas for the upcoming season.

Teaching more rigorous engineering concepts in high school is seen as key.
Following St. Louis, I moved on to Albuquerque, New Mexico, home of the famed University of New Mexico (UNM). Over the years, it has earned a reputation as a top tier research university in the US and boasts a broad range of academic achievements.

A couple of months ago, Professor Ramiro Jordan of UNM's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department visited the Quanser offices to discuss our potential participation in a new UNM initiative to introduce more rigorous engineering concepts into the high school system. Their model is the Advanced Placement (AP) system. In the AP system, high school students can take more challenging versions of English, physics, math and so on - the so-called core courses - and receive university level credit for them prior to entering the freshman year. This allows the student to either take a broader range of courses or accelerates their time in university.

The faculty at UNM felt that they could apply the same concept with the primary freshman engineering courses. That is, have students study engineering computing, design, and other key concepts in high school. So an AP student can theoretically complete an entire semester's worth of engineering studies prior to arrival on campus. The first step was an exploratory session with university and high school officials. Joining me for this leg of the trip was Quanser founder Jacob Apkarian.

We were invited to the discussion because of our work in developing new education concepts in undergraduate engineering. In addition to the many logistical challenges of this initiative, there is also a parallel set of issues surrounding the relevance of the existing freshman engineering curriculum for the modern world. If we're going to go through the effort of shifting courses down to the high school, we might as well reflect on the quality of the courses, some of which are over twenty years old.

Modern engineering education requires an engaging, hands-on approach.
The Quanser perspective is fairly straightforward. You cannot have effective engineering education without thoroughly modern, engaging, hands-on lab experiences. This was the founding principle of the company and, over time, we've developed a strong reputation as an industrial partner who is genuinely active and forward-thinking on matters of engineering education. Jacob and I were delighted find that our strong opinions on the importance of the lab were shared by all at the table.

The core questions of "What should be the primary concepts of freshman engineering?" and "How can labs bring these labs to life?" consumed the larger part of our two day visit and in the end, we were given an opportunity to explore these concepts in more detail back at Quanser and return with a complete proposal.

Jacob Apkarian, founder of Quanser, in discussions with Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty at the Univesity of New Mexico.

There are many things that we do at the company that are exciting and important but this particular discussion seems that much more exciting and important. First is the sheer intellectual challenge of adapting modern engineering practice to a level appropriate for high school students, while at the same time maintaining the high academic standards of a leading university. But there is also the human dimension. My children are 16 and 13 so I, like all parents, have developed some very strong opinions on high school education. As good as their school is, the deficiencies and disconnects are all too evident. This is especially pronounced in the context of STEM education. Extended to the societal level, most of us would agree, I believe, that creating a more cohesive and enriching education experience from K12 right on to grad school is one of the more noble quests in any society.

Our concepts are starting to take shape. And the totality of Quanser expertise is beginning to guide our thinking. At this early stage, we have no idea how far this initiative will go in making a real difference in the lives of our children but it's very satisfying to know that we have been recognized as part of the answer and I feel very privileged that we are going to vigorously take on this complex challenge.


- 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!