Robots, bugs, and high-heeled shoes demonstrate SFU research at Surrey open house
SFU Surrey turned 10 last week, and to celebrate the campus hosted an open house featuring food, music, demonstrations, and a visit from SFU president Andrew Petter. The event was highly publicized as a celebration for 10 years of operation but also served to attract prospective students, familiarize the public with the campus, and allow new students to get the lay of the land.
In the Dale B. Regehr hall, SFSS FCAT student representative and emcee Jenni Rempel, introduced the first act of the function: Jet Black, a local indie one-woman band. This was followed by performances from the SFU Cheer Squad, Vancouver guitarist Dorian Hare, and Dirty Radio — a band from North Vancouver that ramped up the party atmosphere among groups of adolescents in the mezzanine. Beverages, samosas, pizza, and veggie platters were served in several locations as appetizers. Petter joined Rempel in addressing the main stage audience, in praising the Surrey campus for the efforts it has made in engaging students, research, and the community. Following, to celebrate SFU Surrey’s 10th birthday, cupcakes were served from multi-tiered decorative platters.
Throughout the four-hour event, seminars were held informing attendees on admissions process, scholarship opportunities, co-op education, continuing studies, and career services available for SFU students. Faculties within the university also held interactive exhibits for programs offered at SFU Surrey such as computing science, interactive arts and technology, and world literature. Activities and programs mainly served to open informal communication channels between school, staff, students, and parents.
The criminology room featured a demo of maggots dunked in paint and then placed on to sheets of blank paper to create patterns. The display was meant to acclimatize students to working with insects, useful partners in the forensics lab for determining time of death. Dr. Gail Anderson was on site to answer questions regarding the School of Criminology’s forensic research program.
SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) featured systems designed and created by enrolled students. Noro, a portable rainwater catching and filtering device was one such apparatus. “It’s used for places where access to water is a problem. Our system filters one litre of water per minute and could foreseeably provide five to six people with water,” explained Jordan Manning, an SFU SIAT student and part of the Noro team. “We’ve had good responses at the open house and at a showcase our program held. We also had a symposium on interaction design where we placed third. It was an interaction competition and this was an industrial design so this was quite an honour to have placed as well as we did.”
Head Over Heels, a project nearing the final stages of development, is the brainchild of SIAT students Nasim Jahangiri and Pantea Shahsavani; their heeled shoe aims to take the aches out of spending a day in heels by integrating a pressure sensor and vibrator into the footwear which actuates based on metrics. Another feature of the heel is that it can be remodeled as either a two- or fiveinch heel varying comfort and esthetics. “Everyone at the open house seems really interested in our project,” said Jahangiri.
Amar Marzook, an instructor within the mechatronics systems engineering program demonstrated the operation of different robots built by students. “Lego NXT has all the things engineers need to play with to learn; which is basically motors, sensors, and mechanical structures; using all these components to create a machine with a function they have in mind. This is the main key to having students enjoy their work while learning. In upper level classes, they learn the intricacies of how these components work on the inside, like motor controls.”
