From earthquakes to waterfalls - 06/05/2016
This Friday we went to the university of Toronto. The day started with a tour around various engineering labs. The first lab we visited was a structural testing facility. Structures from the CN tower and the Rogers centre were tested in this lab. Other labs we visited were the aerospace lab, with a mechanical cockpit simulator and multiple wind tunnels, and the intelligent transportation systems lab, where among other things it is simulated what would happen if everybody would try to leave Toronto at the same time. The conclusion is that everybody’s screwed.
We were also shown a room similar to the “Westzaal”. The room has workplaces with computers, and workplaces with measuring equipment. The university of Toronto also has a shop called “Stores”. However, this is not like the cool electronics shop we have; they mostly sell books.
After this tour, we were shown some of the cleanroom facilities. The first room we saw was an electron beam nanolithography facility. They could reach a precision of 7 nm on a 6 inch wavers. We also visited a supporting area for a clean room.
For the last part of the morning, we went to the energy systems lab. The first part was a high energy lab, where everything from schematic and pcb design to wiring and coding was done themselves. They were working on efficient DC-DC converter for a local DC network micro grid. Another thing they were working on was rapid charging of electrical vehicles via the electricity grid. For testing purposes, they had a 1 kwH super capacitor.
We had about an hour for lunch before we left to visit another part of the university of Toronto. Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, our car had some slight navigation problems, which caused us to take the scenic route through a traffic jam.
After arriving a bit late, we were shown some demos with quadcopters. They showed an intuitive way to control the quadcopters, how the quadcopters could be used to localise a target and land on it, and how to cleverly control quadcopters.
The second demo was about terrestrial vehicles, with visual teach an repeat. This is used to teach a robot a path which it can later recreate by matching its surrounding with images from the path. After this, it was time to drive to the Niagara falls. We stopped along the way at Niagara-on-the-lake, to appreciate a beautiful view on Lake Ontario with the CN tower in the distance. The sun had already set when we arrived at the Niagara falls, but the view was still impressive. Not much later, the lights turned on and the falls were lit up in beautiful colours. We got an even better view of the falls, and a firework show, from the boat tour. It was very nice to see such a famous landmark.
After a long drive home, it was time to get some sleep during our last night in the hostel in Toronto.
By: Vera Nauta