Member Spotlight

The Wireless ‘Big Dig’
Work Begins on a New Wireless Interface for an Excavator

A new two-year research project has been initiated (April, 2005) with Senior Associate Vansco Electronics of Winnipeg - Canada's premier developer and manufacturer of electronic instrumentation, monitors, controllers, and wire harness assemblies for sale to manufacturers of on-and-off road heavy equipment such as tractors, seeders, harvesters, buses and trucks. The project will feature ZigBee devices (based on the 802.15.4 protocol), which as a standard has key attributes that are appealing in the transportation marketplace: very low power consumption; and an ability to form mesh networks that offer robust data transmission with selforganization and self-healing capabilities.
(Excerpt: 2005 TRLabs Annual Report)

Website: www.vansco.ca

Picture Perfect
Project Seeks Quantitative Measurement of Video Quality

Humans generally have a good sense about what constitutes satisfactory quality of received video - even though they have never watched the 'original' video. The search for an automated, real-time system that replicates this human behaviour (more robust/efficient) has been an elusive one; thirty years of research in Image Quality Metric (IQM) models has had little success in developing an effective, universal computer system.

A TRLabs member and Canada's seventh largest cable service provider serving 30 communities in Saskatchewan, Access Communications Co-operative Ltd. has been working with TRLabs to revisit this research challenge and collaborate to develop a prototype computer system to assess the quality of a photograph, image, or video. For Access, the ability to dynamically characterize and adjust a video signal automatically in real-time before it reaches the customer would improve service delivery and minimize customer encounters with compromised video quality.
(Excerpt - 2005 TRLabs Annual Report)

Website: www.accesscomm.ca