![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/goldbar.gif)
| Friday |
Monday, August 8, 2005
|
Editor: Chris Redmond E-mail announcements to bulletin@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Tataryn]](/images/2005/0701tataryn.jpg)
St. Jerome's
University has its new academic dean and vice-president. Appointed
as of July 1, and now on the job, is Myroslaw Tataryn -- a Ukrainian
Catholic priest, social justice advocate, and professor and writer in
religious studies and anthropology. He
comes to
Waterloo from St. Thomas
More College of the University of Saskatchewan, and succeeds
Kieran Bonner as vice-president and dean.
|
WARG entered the competition, held in Fort Benning, Georgia, with the support of namesake sponsors Research In Motion and QNX Software Systems Limited. WARG has a record as one of the leading teams in the IARC, having won first place in 2004. This year's competition included 20 teams from Canada and the United States.
Brent Tweddle, president and technical leader of WARG, reports: "Although, as planned, we did not fly on the day of the competition, we conducted tests and research that will be extremely valuable and will definitely give us an edge in completing our strategy.
![[Looking down at man looking up]](/images/2005/0808warg.jpg)
A view from WARG's aerial robot of the X that marks the target building and the windows it has to enter. On the ground watching are WARG members Michael Roberts and Suresh Joshi. |
Georgia Tech, ranked first overall, also chose not to fly on the competition day. Simon Fraser University and Virginia Institute of Technology both achieved the first level of the competition this year, and SFU was the only team other than Waterloo to perform the first level with an entirely custom designed autopilot.
Tweddle says the IARC is designed to advance the state of the art in autonomous aerial robotics technology -- the mission set out for students to complete has to-date not been accomplished by any private or government organization. The first level requires a vehicle to autonomously fly a 3-kilometre course around a set of GPS waypoints and hold a position above a small city. For the second level, the flight vehicle needs to autonomously find, somewhere in the city, the location of a building with a symbol and a one meter by one meter open window or windows. To achieve the third level, a vehicle must autonomously enter the correct window, find a specific image inside the building and relay that image back to the judges. The fourth level requires completion of all three levels within 15 minutes; again all aspects must be done autonomously.
WARG's long-term strategy is to use a large fixed-wing airplane (which will be unveiled on September 10, Tweddle says) to travel the three kilometres, search the city with onboard cameras, and drop a guided parachute through the open window that will then release a small ground vehicle to search the building for the required visual information. The entire technical approach will be published in the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's Unmanned Systems 2005 Conference Proceedings and is already available as an online PDF.
WARG is working on this system with a team of more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines in engineering and math.
![[Watt at microphone]](/images/2005/0629watt.jpg)
Watt was one of eight people presented with ORION Awards for their role in pioneering computer networks in the province. "We can draw a straight line from the work these people did, some more than 20 years ago before the Internet was born, to what we have in place today," said ORION CEO Phil Baker.
Watt was among the original directors of ONet Networking, ORION's predecessor, and its chair from 1994 to 1996. A founding member of the CA Domain Registration Committee that oversaw the assignment of ".ca" Internet domain names until 2000, he participated in the technical and review committees that made recommendations on the evolution of CA*net, and was part of the committees that created the ONet and NetNorth networks, as well as serving on many other projects and task forces over the decades.
The first link in NetNorth connected UW and the University of Guelph in September 1983, and the first link in ONet was completed between Waterloo and the University of Western Ontario in August 1988.
Notes in exam timePhillip Street between University Avenue and Columbia Street is closed to through traffic for work on underground pipes. Access to East Campus Hall and parking lot B is from the Columbia Street end.In connection with the watermain work, all water to East Campus Hall will be turned off in the small hours of Tuesday, from about 12:30 a.m. to 7:00. Some 50 participants in the Perimeter Institute International Summer School for Young Physicists are staying in the Ron Eydt Village conference centre, now through August 20. A PhD oral defence from the department of kinesiology: Joan Scannell, "Investigation of Clinically Recommended Actions of Omission and Commission in Disc Prolapse Prevention and Rehabilitation." Supervisor, Stuart McGill. On display in the faculty of applied health sciences, BMH 3110. Oral defence Wednesday, August 24, 9 a.m., Lyle Hallman Institute room 1633. |
![[Brandon]](/images/2005/0629brandon.jpg)
Among the faculty members who retired from UW on July 1 was
James K. (Jim) Brandon (right) of the department of physics, who was
honoured just a few weeks earlier as one of UW's 35-year employees.
Brandon came to Waterloo July 1, 1970, from the Cavendish
Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where he had done
a master's degree following his PhD from McMaster University.
A specialist in crystallography, he was also closely associated
with the mathematical physics program, and he earned a reputation
for helping even the most puzzled student to learn the subject and
ace Physics 121.
It's 28 years since Rodney Sawatsky wrote his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University, but good stuff has a long shelf life. (Sawatsky, president of Conrad Grebel University College from 1989 to 1994, died last year.) The college's newsletter, Grebel Now, reports that the dissertation has just been published, under the title History and Ideology: American Mennonite Identity Definition Through History. "It will be of value," a scholar writes in the introduction, "not only for its theoretical insights and historical information, but also as a historical document in its own right."
A new club is to be launched this fall, says systems design engineering student Fahd Butt, under the title SOFIA-AI. That stands for "Software Organization for Intellectual Advancement in Artificial Intelligence", and the group intends, says Butt, "to promote students' skill set, not just in AI development but through a business case study approach where project management, research, communication and presentation are key." He's looking for future members of the executive, and the club in general: "We would love to hear from you," and there's more information on a web site.
A note from the latest Update newsletter published by St. Jerome's University: "Rana Ahmad of Richmond Hill, Ontario, a resident of Sweeney Hall for two years and an Honours Economics student at UW, was one of only 27 students to receive an International Studies scholarship from Export Development Canada. The prestigious scholarships are awarded to 'top undergraduate students in business and economics' and are valued at up to $14,000 each. Rana is currently in her third year studying Honours Economics and Finance, with specializations in International Trade and Human Resources Management."
C&PA