Automotive News Canada - January 2018 - 16

* J A N U A R Y 2 018

CANADA'S OTHER AUTO INDUSTRY
Vancouver-based electric-vehicle manufacturers, Golnaraghi developed a system to capture energy from suspension
movement and uses it
to recharge a battery,
in the same way that
hybrids and electric
cars generate power
from brake force.
The system builds
on Golnaraghi's
research into active
suspensions at the
University of Waterloo. Farid
It converts motion
Golnaraghi
- either the low-frebelieves tires
quency bumps of city
are a data
driving or the high-fregoldmine.
quency vibrations of

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PA GE

how vehicles perform in various crash scenarios.
Historically, said coordinator Eric
Hildebrand, the team's focus has been on
how effective different safety devices -
airbags, seat belts, side air curtains, seat
belt pre-tensioners and so on - perform
in a crash.
"Given that the state of vehicle crashworthiness has essentially matured," he
said, "our current mandate is starting to
shift more toward the performance of
crash-avoidance technologies [such as]
autonomous braking, lane-departure warning, pedestrian detection, etc."
The team has worked with Transport
Canada for more than 45 years.

(PHOTO:

Clean diesel, and
a cleaner alternative
UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL
NORTHERN ALBERTA
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
EDMONTON

Don't let that black smoke fool you.
Today's diesel engine emits less pollution
than its gasoline counterpart, according to
a Université de Montréal chemist who took
part in a multi-nation study.
Patrick Hayes said the finding should
spur regulators to turn their attention to
reducing gasoline emissions.
"Diesel has a bad
reputation because
you can see the pollution, but it's actually the
invisible pollution that
comes from gasoline in
cars that's worse," the
assistant professor said
following publication of
Diesel has
the study last July.
cleaned
The researchers
up its act,
found that gasoline
says Patrick
powerplants pump out
Hayes.
10 times more carbona(PHOTO:
ceous particulate matUNIVERSITÉ
ter than diesels with
DE MONTRÉAL)
the particle filters now
required in many countries, and even more
at startup when the gasoline engine's catalytic converter hasn't reached operating
temperature.
Lower emissions could be possible with a low-carbon fuel for long-haul
trucks under study at the Northern Alberta
Institute of Technology.
In a partnership with Mack Trucks,
Westcan Bulk Transport and Oberon Fuels,
researchers at the institute hope to develop
fuel-moisture-management technology for
dimethyl ether (DME), a cleaner-burning,

Eric Hildebrand leads a crash-research team.
(PHOTO: ROB BLANCHARD,
UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK)

diesel-fuel alternative.
Their goal is to remove residual water
from the fuel before injection into the
engine, eliminating problems of corrosion
and reduced performance.
DME is made from natural gas or methanol produced from biomass feedstock,
such as wood chips, and, like diesel, is
ignited by compression. It is sulfur-free and
burns with no particulate matter.
The project has funding from Alberta's
Ministry of Economic Development and
Trade.

Every turn you take,
every move you make
UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL
ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE
KINGSTON, ONT.

Listening to tires
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
VANCOUVER

Inside the rolling cylinder of synthetic
rubber known as a tire, is untapped data.
Lots of it. Every bounce and every minute
change in adhesion could be gold to the
electronic systems that are meant to optimize the vehicle's safety and efficiency.
But unlocking this information, beyond
the rudimentary and often problematic pressure sensors adopted in the 1990s,
has been difficult.
"Given the obvious major challenges associated with online monitoring of
tire performance, tire instrumentation was
ignored, or avoided, until very recently," says Farid Golnaraghi of Simon Fraser
University in Vancouver.
Working with two postgraduate students, Golnaraghi has developed "smart"
sensors for tires that include wireless trans-

highway travel - into
SIMON FRASER
electricity.
UNIVERSITY)
Neither system
has found a taker, the sensors perhaps
because of cost, the suspension system because battery life today gets more
attention than charging. But Golnaraghi
is content to work on new projects with
partners including Ballard Power Systems
and, more importantly, to send out graduates to good jobs across Canada.
"I'm very proud of that," he said.

A regenerative suspension system
was developed using Simon Fraser
University's "quarter car shaker."
(IMAGE: SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY)

mission modules and microsensors, and
can be powered not by batteries, as pressure sensors are, but by the very movements they measure.
While the system is complicated, it
yields more data more quickly than the
chassis-mounted gyros and other sensors
now used in stability control and other systems.
Sensors aren't the only specialty for
the head of SFU's School of Mechatronic
Systems Engineering. In a project with

Brandon University students and Cypher
Environmental technicians are involved in a project
to create more durable and less dusty dirt roads.
(PHOTO: BRANDON UNIVERSITY)

Not all drivers want their insurance
companies riding along with them, but
some willingly surrender their privacy and
allow their movements to be tracked in
the hope of reduced rates if they prove to
be good drivers.
The insurance companies, in turn, sift
through a mountain of detail - location,
speed, time of day, cornering, braking -
to judge each customer's level of risk.
The problem is that
the satellite data, provided through a plugin device or an app
on the driver's phone,
might not be specific
enough to allow accurate assessments.
"The GPS signal
is often off by one,
two or three metres.
"MapIt can sometimes look
matcher"
like a car is driving on
Aurélie
the roof of a building
Labbe of the
or in the ditch, if you
Université
look at the raw data,"
de Montréal
said Aurélie Labbe,
business
an associate professchool.
sor with the Université ( P H O T O : H E C
MONTRÉAL)
de Montréal business
school.
With support from Intact Insurance
and the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (NSERC),
Labbe and her HEC Montréal team are
working on "map-matching" to refine the
GPS results.
The first phase involves driving
through Montreal and comparing their
GPS data with the actual routes to establish the margin of error and determine
map-matching algorithms. A second
stage will see the researchers analyze
the routes taken by some 350,000 users,
which equates to about 15 terabytes of
GPS data.
More precise positioning is also the
goal of a project led by Aboelmagd
Noureldin of the Royal Military College
in Kingston. The focus there, however, is
on linking GPS data to the signals from
the radar and lidar systems increasingly
showing up in vehicle collision-avoidance
systems. - ANC

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - January 2018