drones

Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 24 May 2022 16:54:40 +0000

Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/24/2022 - 12:54

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The Ensminger Lab's drone flight team has developed a technology that remotely assesses photosynthetic phenology and plant fitness (photo courtesy of Ensminger Lab)

Tanya Rohrmoser

Topic

Breaking Research

Conservation

Biology

Climate Change

drones

Environment

Forests

Research and Innovation

Sustainability

�鶹��Ƶ Mississauga

Canada has nearly 362 million hectares of forest, but climate change is negatively impacting tree health and productivity. Trees planted today need to withstand future climate instability.

Enter Ingo Ensminger, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and an innovative new technology that could provide further insights into tree health. Ensminger’s lab studies plant-environment interactions and the impact of climate change on metabolism and photosynthesis of plants from molecular to leaf, species and ecosystem level.

Ingo Ensminger

Ensminger and his team have developed a drone-based technology, dubbed the FastPheno project, that remotely assesses photosynthetic phenology and plant fitness.

“Most people who use drones in trees and forests try to measure height and the size of the canopy, they use drones for inventories,” he says. “Our goal is different – we try to assess health and fitness, and overall performance as indicated by the ability of vegetation to remove CO2 from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize and produce biomass.”

Ensminger was recently awarded $4.7 million in funding for his FastPheno project by Genome Canada, an independent, federally funded not-for-profit.

“It is very rewarding to receive funding to develop and implement tools that will hopefully be used to help tree breeders and forest practitioners to identify trees that are resilient to climate change,” says Ensminger, who anticipates the tools will be used for tree improvement programs or to set targets for forest conservation and management.

Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program brings new applied genomics solutions to issues facing Canadians, and supports collaborations in forestry and other sectors.

The unique technology enables them to distinguish the performance of thousands of trees, and researchers can use the approach to detect drought stress control on photosynthesis in natural forests.

“All this is based on the optical fingerprint of vegetation,” Ensminger explains. “This fingerprint is derived by measurements of leaf spectral reflectance. Leaf spectral reflectance is highly variable, and it can be used as a plant health indicator, because it changes upon exposure to drought stress or heat stress.” The fingerprint is also species-specific, and hence future work in Ensminger’s lab will also explore how species can be distinguished to monitor biodiversity.

When it comes to tree breeding and forest conservation, the ability to distinguish trees that perform well during drought and heat is incredibly useful — complementing genomic selection with adaptive traits could help produce trees resilient to future climate in Canada.

Simply put, Ensminger believes, it could transform Canada's forest sector.

“Outcomes have been very promising,” Ensminger reports. “We can distinguish trees that are water-stressed from well-watered trees, we can assess how photosynthetic activity varies over the course of the year, and in large forest stands we can identify trees that perform well and distinguish those from unhealthy trees or trees that are stressed.”

Ensminger’s technology is fast, reliable and cost-effective compared to vegetation monitoring that relies on visual inspections and manual measurements. New research enabled through FastPheno now aims to apply the drone-based phenotyping approach at a large scale and explore how reliably it can be used across forests in Ontario and Quebec to monitor the health and fitness of individual trees.

If successful, FastPheno could create cost savings of $540 million per year and reduce assessment times from a matter of weeks to hours – and it can be transferred from forest vegetation to applications in agriculture, conservation and biodiversity studies.

St. Casimir experimental forest in Quebec, a field site where Ensminger and his team do a lot of their drone work (photo courtesy of Éric Dussault, Natural Resources Canada)

What’s next for Ensminger’s team? During their drone flights, they’re collecting an enormous amount of data – and now it’s a matter of processing and analyzing it. They’re collaborating with robotics experts to improve field data collection and will be developing tools to automate the process of image analysis and pixel classification using machine learning and AI technologies.

“We also aim to develop software and web-interfaces that provide users access so that not just researchers, but a wide range of end-users have access to the data produced through this approach,” he says.

“This is an exhilarating time for genomics,” noted Rob Annan, Genome Canada President and CEO, following a federal announcement of funding in March for FastPheno and other projects. “The knowledge, tools and technologies it is generating are driving innovation in traditional sectors and helping them achieve green growth, as well as improving the health and quality of life of Canadians.”

Ensminger’s project will complement the genomic selection research and operational programs of Natural Resources Canada and the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks of Quebec.

�鶹��Ƶ architecture camp aims to inspire kids from under-represented communities: Globe and Mail

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 27 May 2019 15:27:13 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ architecture camp aims to inspire kids from under-represented communities: Globe and Mail

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 05/27/2019 - 11:27

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(photo by Harry Choi)

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

From programming drones to watching laser cutters bring keychain designs to life, the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is putting on a summer camp for kids aged nine to 14 – part of an effort to boost connections between the school and the city that surrounds it.

“There’s a lot of cool technology stuff that school systems just aren’t getting to because they don’t have access; we’re privileged as a post-secondary, partially publicly funded institution, so we want to share that access,” the faculty’s manager of external relations, Nene Brode, told The Globe and Mail.

Attendees will be split into the “Bits & Bytes” group (ages nine to 11) and the “DigiFab” group (ages 12 to 14), with both camps enjoying activities that revolve around the theme of drones and their role in modern urban design, in what Brode described as “a fun, casual kind of setting.” The program will also touch on other topics such as hacking, the mysteries of the dark web and the importance of protecting one’s personal information on social media, with time set aside for interaction with �鶹��Ƶ architecture students and professors as well as athletic activity outdoors.

Ultimately, the hope is that the camp helps nurture a more diverse architectural community by welcoming kids from communities that are traditionally under-represented in the field, Brode said.

Canada goose trackers: �鶹��Ƶ team wins national drone competition by scouring for bird nests

ullahnor — Mon, 15 May 2017 21:02:31 +0000

Canada goose trackers: �鶹��Ƶ team wins national drone competition by scouring for bird nests

ullahnor Mon, 05/15/2017 - 17:02

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The �鶹��Ƶ engineering team, from left to right, Oliver Wu, Andrew Ilersich, Erik Chau, Winston Liu, Kevin Dong, Kevin Xu, Rikky Duivenvoorden and Spencer Zhao, took first place at the national competition (photo courtesy of UTAT)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

drones

Students

Undergraduate Students

Building drones to locate the nests of four different types of geese in the Canadian wilderness – that's what a �鶹��Ƶ engineering team had to do to take first place at the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Student Competition, organized by Unmanned Systems Canada.

The University of Toronto Aerospace Team’s (UTAT) UAV Division designed a two-drone system capable of meeting this year’s challenge: to survey and locate the nests of geese in remote areas. The competition took place between April 28 to 30 in Alma, Que.

The teams were also asked to retrieve an egg from one of the nests to be tested for environmental contaminants.

“I was totally impressed with the incredible enthusiasm and wonderful talent of these young university students,” said David Bird, an ornithologist and professor emeritus at McGill University. Bird often uses drones in his own research and devised the challenge for this year’s competition.

“It was a pleasure to be among them for the three days in Alma, and I was thrilled that they were being challenged by my goose census and egg sample retrieval,” Bird said.

“Retrieving the egg was particularly difficult,” says Rikky Duivenvoorden, an engineering student who acted as the safety pilot and technical advisor for UTAT’s UAV Division. “We’ve had to drop things before, but picking something up added a completely new dimension.”

The team created two separate vehicles: a fixed-wing UAV called UT-X2B to conduct the census and a quadcopter called UTX-D to retrieve the egg. Both vehicles can fly to a specified location autonomously, using GPS to navigate and visual cameras to capture images of their targets. The robotic arm used to capture the egg, however, is operated manually.

While no team managed to capture the egg during the initial run, the organizers invited all of the teams to demonstrate their retrieval mechanism on the competition’s second day. Teams were also judged on how well their aerial surveys matched the known distribution of simulated geese on the ground.

“It’s always tense because while you can see how well the other teams are flying, you can’t see any of the problems that they are having behind the scenes in terms of processing the images,” says Duivenvoorden. “We were really surprised and happy when we won.”

A second team from UTAT’s Aerial Robotics Division also did well at the competition – the team's vehicle, UT Skyhawk, combines both fixed-wing and quad-copter components. It placed fourth overall, and the team won the judges’ award for professionalism. Earlier this year, UTAT’s Aerial Robotics Division won the design phase of the competition, with the UAV Division coming in second.

This is Duivenvoorden’s fifth and final turn at the competition. After finishing his master’s degree under the supervision of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering's Assistant Professor Angela Schoellig last fall, he’s now launching a startup company, Keystone Composites. The company will manufacture carbon-fibre components with a better strength-to-weight ratio than those currently available and was directly inspired by the challenges the team faced in finding suitable materials for the drones. Keystone Composites is receiving support from Start@UTIAS, one of �鶹��Ƶ Engineering’s two startup accelerators.

Duivenvoorden says it’s just a matter of time before drones become prevalent in daily life.

“From a technological standpoint, we’re basically there. From a regulatory standpoint, we have to share the airspace with manned aircraft so it’s very important to make sure that we ensure safety for everyone,” he says. “As autonomous systems like ours continue to improve, that will become easier to do.”

�鶹��Ƶ researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

ullahnor — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:18:22 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

ullahnor Mon, 11/14/2016 - 12:18

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�鶹��Ƶ's Timothy Chan (left), Angela Schoellig and Justin Boutilier (right) are part of a research team trying to use drones to deliver AEDs (photo by Liz Do)

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Subheadline

Drone delivery could shave crucial minutes off the median ambulance response times in both rural and urban regions

When a person goes into cardiac arrest, every passing minute hurts their chances of survival. Now, a group of University of Toronto researchers want to use drones to deliver life-saving automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) rapidly and directly to homes.

Justin Boutilier, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, envisions a future in which a bystander or family member who witnesses a cardiac arrest can call 911, and within minutes, an AED is flown to their doorstep or balcony to be administered – before the paramedics arrive.

Boutilier is working under Associate Professor Timothy Chan, director of �鶹��Ƶ's Centre for Healthcare Engineering, in collaboration with Assistant Professor Angela Schoellig and researchers from St. Michael’s Hospital's Rescu program, in order to turn the futuristic idea into a life-saving reality.

This project comes on the heels of research by Chan’s lab on cardiac arrests that occur outside of hospitals, and the lack of accessible AEDs in public locations during non-business hours. Boutilier is now focusing on reducing deaths from cardiac arrests that occur at home.

About 85 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Southern Ontario take place within a private residence.

“For those arrests, the public AEDs are not useful because it’s hard to get to them in time. It’s also not cost effective to put AEDs everywhere in the suburbs,” explained Boutilier.

Therefore, the survival rates are not good.

“Not only is the survival rate of private-location cardiac arrests low, the response times are also slower than public locations,” said Chan. “So we thought, we need to come up with something completely new.”

Chan and Dr. Steve Brooks, an emergency physician at Kingston General Hospital and frequent collaborator at Rescu, found a video of a prototype AED drone designed at Delft University in the Netherlands. A PhD student had developed the prototype, complete with a camera and microphone, which weighed only four kilograms and travelled 100 kilometres per hour.

“To us, the idea of using a drone to deliver an AED to private location cardiac arrests seemed like a no-brainer,” said Chan.

Of the many benefits to AED drone delivery: “You don’t have to worry about traffic. You could get the AED there faster than paramedics so the bystander can start treatment as early as possible. And that’s very important. Every minute that goes by, the chance of survival decreases,” said Chan.

To determine where drones should be stationed and how many are needed to serve a given population, Boutilier obtained historical cardiac arrest data from eight regions in Southern Ontario, including dense urban cities and sparse rural communities.

“We conducted our analysis by imagining that this technology was implemented five years ago and asking, what would the next five years have looked like?” Boutilier explained.

What they found was that they were able to shave several minutes off the median ambulance response times in both rural and urban regions, and drones could arrive ahead of ambulances more than 90 per cent of the time.

“The one challenging thing is that it’s hard to know the number of lives we could have saved, which is what we’re looking at now,” said Boutilier.

Regulatory restrictions present another challenge to implementation – aviation, including drone flights, is strictly regulated by Transport Canada. Current rules stipulate that users are prohibited from flying drones out of their line of sight.

Schoellig, the associate director of the Centre for Aerial Robotics Research and Education (CARRE) at U of T, believes these restrictive regulations won’t last for long. “It is a matter of proving safety and reliability of this new technology to the regulators. This will require more technological breakthroughs – for example, giving drones the ability to detect obstacles.

But drone technology has developed very quickly in the last five to 10 years,” she explained.

“Google and Amazon are already working on implementing delivery drones and have been lobbying the government to ease these regulations,” added Boutilier. “So if the government allows the drone delivery of commercial products, they would allow the delivery of AEDs, which is a life-saving matter.”

This past weekend, Boutilier and Chan presented their research at the American Heart Association Resuscitation Science Symposium in New Orleans, where Boutilier says he was excited to see the reactions from attendees.

“Depending on whom you talk to, the response can be very different. When I talk to medical professionals, some say, ‘That’s too futuristic,’ but when I talk to tech people their reaction is often, ‘This technology has been around for the last few years. We could do this tomorrow.’

“We’re trying to shake things up a bit within the field of health care, and change the way people are thinking about how we solve problems.”

In the near future, Boutilier hopes to pilot the project in Muskoka, a region that has a high rate of bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and the slowest ambulance response time of all the regions they’ve gathered data from.

“I think the technology is there. I think the challenge is in the details of how to make this work,” said Chan. “It’s working through government regulations, coordinating with Emergency Medical Services, and making sure the public is behind this, that they have awareness of drones and its various purposes.

“But ultimately, it’s an idea that I think can really make a huge leap forward in our ability to get defibrillators to patients. I think within five to 10 years, drone deliveries will be a reality.”

“A robot in every home”: �鶹��Ƶ expertise showcased at ACE

lavende4 — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 17:47:20 +0000

“A robot in every home”: �鶹��Ƶ expertise showcased at ACE lavende4 Mon, 10/03/2016 - 13:47

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Aerial acrobatic demonstration by UTIAS Flight Systems & Control group

Topic

University of Toronto ingenuity in robotics, mechatronics and automation was on display at the sixth Americas Competitiveness Exchange (ACE) last week.

The ACE event, hosted at University of Toronto on September 26 and 27, attracted almost 50 participants from governments in the Americas, as well as India, Israel, Germany and Korea. Among the speakers were Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, federal science minister Kirsty Duncan and �鶹��Ƶ President Meric Gertler.

Read about President Gertler's thoughts on innovation

Read what Wynne, Duncan and Amon had to say about diversity and innovation

�鶹��Ƶ research projects were highlights at ACE. Engineering professors Goldie Nejat (MIE) and Tim Barfoot (UTIAS) joined Richard Zemel and Raquel Urtasun of the department of computer science, and Elissa Strome of the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform to discuss the intersection of machine learning, big data and robotics.

“Traditionally robots have been found in factories, where they do one job,” said Nejat. “We’re looking at bringing robots out of the factory and into people’s homes … by 2050, there will be a robot in every home.”

Nejat and her team demonstrated two of the assistive robots her lab is developing, Tangy and Casper to help aging populations manage daily tasks in the home and provide cognitive stimulation. Tangy led a group of graduate students in a game of BINGO, calling out the numbers, evaluating the winning card, and celebrating with the winner by playing music and congratulating him.

The ACE delegates then walked to the University of Toronto’s Back Campus field to take in an aerial robotics demonstration by Professor Hugh Liu from �鶹��Ƶ's Institute for Aerospace Studies. Liu’s group debuted a new flight algorithm, in which 20 drones flew in perfect synchronization, forming a cube and rotating in midair.

Spruced up: �鶹��Ƶ biologist uses drones to help build a better tree

lavende4 — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 13:20:46 +0000

Spruced up: �鶹��Ƶ biologist uses drones to help build a better tree

lavende4 Fri, 08/26/2016 - 09:20

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White Spruce cones (Photo by MyLoupe/UIG Via Getty Images)

Carla DeMarco

Author legacy

Carla DeMarco

Topic

Ingo Ensminger, a biologist at University of Toronto Mississauga, is using a drone to help breed better spruce trees.

Ensminger and his collaborators are working on a suite of modern genomic resources to improve tree breeding and selection, using large white spruce progeny trials established in Quebec and Ontario by the Canadian Forest Service (CFS). This progeny data represents 20 years of tree-breeding research, where scientists have selected 2,000 different genetic lines of spruce seedlings; they expect to find spruce seedlings among those lines that will efficiently adapt to environmental stresses.

Along with his CFS collaborator Nathalie Isabel, and in association with industry partner PrecisionHawk, Ensminger will use a drone carrying optical sensors for leaf-spectral measurements that will ultimately help distinguish the best genetic lines based on their “optical fingerprint.” The project is funded by Ontario Genomics.

“The main idea behind the optical fingerprint is the fact that plants constantly interact with their ever-changing environment,” says Ensminger (left). “This involves adjustments in pigments that are responsible for the colour of the leaf. These adjustments take place within minutes and over the course of the season in order to mitigate stress and maximize the yield of photosynthesis. Adjustments in leaf pigments accurately reflect the fitness of a plant.”

His team will use samples of seedlings from the ground to assess fitness, using existing tests. After measuring the optical properties of these leaves, they will compare findings with data collected by the drone – data that is captured in a fraction of the time and on a much larger scale. The ground data, he notes, will help the team better understand the drone data, and calibrate growth models accordingly.

“The resolution of the drone sensor will be good enough to distinguish individual seedlings,” Ensminger says. “We think we can assess performance of individual plants and quickly identify the most robust genetic lines during a short drone flight from fields with several thousand individuals.”

The investment by Ontario Genomics’ Pre-Commercialization Business Development Fund will support deployment of a software application created by PrecisionHawk that will eventually become available to breeders and forest managers through the Algorithm Marketplace.

“This will be a software tool made for users in the breeding and forest management industry,” says Ensminger.

“While the users are not specialists in remote sensing and plant physiology, this software will help them analyze drone data and determine the fitness of individual trees or entire forest stands. They’ll be able to quickly assess when trees are water stressed or when the growing season ends, so they can adjust their management practices accordingly.”

drones

Drone-based technology remotely assesses health of trees impacted by climate change

�鶹��Ƶ architecture camp aims to inspire kids from under-represented communities: Globe and Mail

Read more about the summer camp in the Globe and Mail

Canada goose trackers: �鶹��Ƶ team wins national drone competition by scouring for bird nests

�鶹��Ƶ researchers' drone-delivered AEDs offer novel approach to saving lives at home

“A robot in every home”: �鶹��Ƶ expertise showcased at ACE

Read about President Gertler's thoughts on innovation

Read what Wynne, Duncan and Amon had to say about diversity and innovation

Spruced up: �鶹��Ƶ biologist uses drones to help build a better tree