Economic Crises: Challenge or Opportunity for 2009?

Everyday newspapers and TV bring us grim news on the world's economy. Universities worldwide find it more challenging than ever to secure funds for teaching and research. But there is some positive news from different countries and institutions around the world:

Ireland has announced funding worth more than €60 million in support of advanced scientific research. The mix of State and private sector money will back three large research centres based at University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin and NUI Galway. The money will go into “Csets”, Centres for Science, Engineering and Technology. These are large-scale investments designed specifically to encourage and support linkages between academic researchers and companies. Full story here.

Germany's Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan has come up with proposals to fund measures in higher education and research as a way to help stimulate the country's flagging economy. Investing around EUR15 billion (US$20 billion) in higher education infrastructure and providing tax incentives for small and medium-sized business to spend more on research could provide a vital boost to business, Schavan says. Full story here.

The U.S. Department of Defense will invest an additional $400 million over the next five years to support basic research at academic institutions. The goal is to fund research of up-and-coming scientific areas and to foster fundamental discoveries related to the department's challenging technical problems. Merit-based awards, based on peer review, will support projects begining in fiscal 2009 that will be funded for five years. Projects will be based on various academic areas, like physics, ocean science, chemistry and electrical engineering. Full story here.

Philippines Commission on Higher Education Chairman, Emmanuel Angeles, has vowed to strengthen research and development capability in state universities and colleges. The country's 111 state institutions have been divided into six clusters to maximise the utilisation of resources. "We are going to give full support to the research and development arm of tertiary institutions to upgrade the quality of higher education in the country. We will ask Congress to provide us additional funding to boost this program," Angeles said. Full story here.

The European Union last week unveiled an anti-recession plan which includes strong spending on research and development. European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik, said the European Economic Recovery Plan looked beyond the "short distance" of the immediate recession and took account of the commission's longer-term plan of building Europe's future prosperity on the basis of a knowledge economy. The recovery plan proposed three major public-private partnerships expected to be worth more than EUR7 billion (US$8.8 billion) and also called on member states to increase investment in R&D and education. Full story here.

The Korean government announced its selections for the multi-million-dollar World Class University program which aims to turn Korea’s universities into top-notch international institutions. A total of 52 projects from 18 universities have been chosen to receive grants, with major schools like Seoul National University accounting for most of the picks to receive funding. Among the winners, Seoul National won funding for seven projects. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Postech got three each, and Korea, Sungkyunkwan and Yonsei universities each had two projects selected. A total of 825 billion won ($571 million), or 165 billion won a year, has been allocated through 2012. Full story here.

The Purdue University Board of Trustees has approved the use of $10.8 million from the Vincent P. Reilly Memorial Fund for the College of Engineering to finance portions of the college's, including global education, research initiatives and faculty development. The university will use $2.3 million to support a curriculum innovation project and cooperative work programs and internships. More than $4 million will be used to provide seed funding for new research initiatives and provide gap funding to support employment of research staff. Full story here.

Dr. Bernard Gordon, chairman of NeuroLogica Corporation, has made a $1.5 million gift The Citadel School of Engineering (The Military College of South Carolina). This generous contribution will support scholarship, program, equipment and classroom enhancements to advance the college’s highly ranked engineering program. This contribution will provide essential new equipment for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department for the next five years as well as renovate an existing classroom in Grimsley Hall to create a first-class, technologically state-of-the-art conference and seminar room, to be named in the donor’s honor. Full story here.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has received a grant from the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Higher Education Investment Fund. The grant money will support the development of courses in UMBC’s Engineering Management and Electrical Engineering master’s programs that will assist the needs of professionals relocating to Aberdeen and Fort Meade. UMBC will develop four new graduate courses in electrical engineering that are responsive to workforce needs. Full story here.

Despite the challenging federal funding environment, the University of Cincinnati secured $20 million more in research dollars in 2008 than in 2007, pulling in a record $353 million. Engineering increased research dollars to more than $30 million, a 64 percent increase beyond 2007's $18.6 million. Specific successes recognized by Degen, VP for research include the expansion to Children's Hospital and the completion of the Center for Academic and Research Excellence (CARE)/Crawley Building (one of the largest health-research complexes in the United States), the $28 million donated to UC for aerospace engineering, Choose Ohio First scholarships program, a three-year, $10 million partnership with Ethicon Endo Surgery and a $20 million anonymous gift to support UC's space exploration program. Full story here.

A gift of $10 million was given by Bill Lyles, his family and companies to better the education for students of College of Engineering, California State University Fresno. The university agreed to match Lyles’ donation. With the university’s added money, there will be a total of $20 million being put toward the college for the coming years. Full story here.

QUARC: Using An External Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Instead of using the opened Simulink diagram in external mode to interact with a QuaRC model, a Simulink-independent Graphical User Interface (GUI) can be used. Such a GUI runs on the QUARC host machine in place of the Simulink diagram.

The QUARC external interfaces (a.k.a. external APIs) are designed to allow the user to communicate with the generated QUARC real-time code and/or access hardware. In particular the QUARC communications API (available as C/C++ or .NET functions) can be used to establish communication channels, using one of the QUARC-supported protocols (e.g., UDP, TCP/IP, shared memory), between a user-written application, such as a front-end GUI, and a Simulink model(s) (i.e., QUARC real-time code).

In addition, QUARC currently supports two GUI-building environments: MATLAB and Altia. Both provide a powerful way to easily and rapidly develop fully-featured GUIs.

As an example, QuaRC already provides a fully-documented demonstration that includes a Simulink model and a MATLAB GUI created using the MATLB GUI Development Environment, i.e. GUIDE. This created GUI can be used to build, start, and stop the model. In addition it can also perform online parameter tuning and data plotting on the model. This is illustrated below where the sidebar is used to increase or decrease the sine wave frequency, which in turn is monitored and where any change can be seen immediately as the plot is updated in real-time. Online parameter tuning has just been carried out without even having to open the Simulink model! Although familiarity with the MATLAB interpretive environment makes this option attractive, GUIs created this way cannot be deployed independently of MATLAB.

QuaRC MATLAB GUI Example

Where standalone GUIs should be deployed on the end-user's system completely independent of MATLAB and Simulink, QUARC provides a flexible interface to Altia, as MATLAB and Simulink are not required when using Altia GUIs. Altia Design is a very powerful tool for creating professional-quality standalone GUIs for industrial applications. Just like the MATLAB GUIs, an Altia-created GUI allows the user to control, change parameters on-the-fly, and monitor signals in a QUARC real-time model. Moreover, the QUARC Plot library for Altia significantly augments the basic plotting components supplied with Altia, by providing scopes that can plot signals versus time. QUARC, of course, fully documents the process of creating and interacting with an Altia GUI, as well as specialized features such as starting and stopping (i.e., controlling) the real-time model, right from the graphical user interface itself! Industrial-application requirements can further be satisfied when this is also combined with QUARC's ability to generate production-optimized code and configurating it to run at boot on any of its supported targets (e.g., Windows, QNX x86, gumstix Verdex).

Quanser in Mexico: Conference on Decision and Control

I just came back from IEEE's Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) in Cancun, Mexico.Together with Quanser's Mexican distributor's representative, Jacqueline Vicarte from MultiON, we were demonstrating the latest and greatest teaching and research solutions in the Quanser booth.

Not surprisingly, the Active Suspension attracted a lot of attention. Conference delegates asked a lot of great questions about this unique and cutting edge experimental platform for control labs. In particular, Dr. Juan Camino showed interest in using the Active Suspension along with QuaRC software for his research in time varying systems. I may post more on this in the future.

For a bit of fun in between CDC's workshops and technical sessions, we invited delegates to take our WiiMote Inverted Pendulum Challenge. Even CDC's General Chair, Dr. Abdallah couldn't resist the experiment that captivates many engineering students.At some point people were lining up to try their skills with this interactive twist on a classic control experiment. Everyone who gave it a swing was entered into a draw to win their very own iPod. And the winner of the WiiMote Inverted Pendulum Challenge is Daniel Quevedo from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Congratulations and Happy Holidays!

Dr. Chaouki Abdallah, Chair of CDC'08, testing Quanser's Active Suspension

Dr. Dennis Bernstein, Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan and the Editor of IEEE Control Systems Magazine visits our booth at CDC'08 - with Dr. Jacob Apkarian, Founder and CTO of Quanser.

Setting up Quanser's booth at the CDC'08

-Mahyar-

Shake Table II Software

The Shake Table II has been the most popular of the Quanser shake tables over the years and it has now been made easier to use. The Shake Table II Software is available now and shown in the image below. It allows users to command various signals to the seismic table such as sine wave and chirp as well as sample earthquakes, e.g. Northridge and Kobe. In addition, this program automatically initializes the amplifier and calibrates the table before running any signal. Engineers and scientist can therefore get their Shake Table II moving by double-clicking on an icon!

The GUI was designed using LabVIEW and the position controller running on the STII is implemented in QuaRC. To use this software, Shake Table II users need the LabVIEW Run-Time Engine, which is free to download, and QuaRC (no need for Matlab/Simulink).

In addition, this software can be used in a remote configuration. That is, the STII can be connected to a remote PC, such as the Quanser WEECS system, and controlled from a host PC/laptop through a cable or wireless network.

New Year's Message

An Informal New Year's Message from Paul Gilbert, Quanser's CEO

CE mark on Quanser products

There are very strict regulations in Europe now regarding product safety. Certain equipment needs to be CE certified and comply with electromagnetic compatibility and safety standards. As we hear from our customers, it’s getting tougher and tougher for Universities to find authentic CE compliant suppliers.

Quanser's customers worldwide can have their peace of mind, knowing Quanser's equipment is now CE certified. We had all our power modules tested at their maximum load and met all safety requirements. The certification applies to the whole systems.

The whole project of CE certification took us about 3-4 months to finish. It involved a full review of all our experiments by Global Advantage International: for the electromagnetic portion the devices were put in an electromagnetic chamber where the impact on wiring and cabling was measured while running on maximum load, checking also for any effects on other electromagnetic devices and adequate shielding. For the safety testing, in the lab our devices were exposed to heating, zapping with lightning, you name it. With few minor recommendations that were promptly implemented, we proudly passed the tests. The stickers on your new equipment prove it!

-Zuzana-

The inside scoop on engineering equipment used by the world's top-ranked universities

Recently the new University Rankings for 2008 were released in U.S., Canada and worldwide. Although sometimes considered controversial, they still provide a good overview of the "top institutions". I was interested in finding out whether Quanser's equipment keeps up with demands of the top schools. Let's see...

The U.S. News and World Report brings the list of Best Engineering Schools in 2008:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - visit their Mechanical Engineering Department and you will find couple of Quanser's WEECS - research tool suitable for remote data collection and control applications;
2. Stanford University - OK, this one is a bit tricky - since our database records don't go all the way back to Quanser's inception 19 years ago, I have to rely on Jacob's good memory that they may have Quanser's Shake Table in their Civil Engineering Department. Anybody from Stanford out there to confirm?
3. University of California, Berkeley - the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences uses Quanser's Linear Family workstations with Double Inverted Pendulum, Seesaw and Linear Flexible Joint modules, as well as QuaRC, our real-time control software to teach undergraduate courses;
4. Georgia Institute of Technology - in addition to Quanser's Q8 HIL boards and software solutions, students can see a 3DOF Helicopter in action at the Aerospace Engineering Department;
5. University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign - along with QuaRC's predecessor WinCon, the undergraduate students at the Department of Computer Sciences put theory into practice with a 3DOF Helicopter

There you have it. Insights into what the Top 5 Engineering Schools may have in their control labs.

Now, let's look at how we stand on our home turf: Canada's Maclean's Magazine has
just published it's 18th Annual Ranking Report. The top 5 Universities ranked in a Comprehensive category* are:

1. Simon Fraser University - students at the School of Engineering Sciences can learn controls using Quanser Engineering Trainer - DC Motor Control, as well as the Linear Family experiments and the Mechatronics Control Kit;
2. Victoria University - several departments use Quanser Engineering Trainers for undergraduate teaching, while researchers at the Department of Mechanical Engineering are using Quanser's Haptic Devices, like 5DOF Haptic Wand;
3. University of Waterloo - has a wide selection of experiments for undergraduate teaching, including experiments from Linear and Rotary Motion Families as well as Coupled Tanks experiment, used by departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics;
4. University of Guelph - OK, no records here - Sales can you fix it, please;
   
5. Memorial University - the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences teaches robotics using Quanser's Open-Architecture 5DOF CRS Robot

*Comprehensive category includes institutions that have a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees

Looking at the World University rankings, some more Quanser customers show up. I have looked at two lists - The QS World University Rankings and the Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education, and found:

• Imperial College, UK
• Australian National University, Australia
• ETH Zurich, Switzerland
  
• University of Manchester, UK
• Technical University of Munich, Germany
• University of Melbourne, Australia

There are many more universities Quanser works with, who we value and respect for bringing up a new generation of engineers and for their innovative research. We will be referring to them throughout 2009 in our blog and eNEWS. Who would you personally nominate for the top 10 Universities and why?

-Zuzana-