• Applied Technology Research
• Education Research
• Animation Arts Research
• Biotechnology Research
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• Built Environment Research

Aviation

Seneca has developed a robust and very active research program at its college degree-based aviation flight technology training program.  Over the past two decades simulation has gained acceptance as a viable and valuable tool for flight training.  Seneca is investigating various aspects of the use of simulation to improve flight training.

Our research program has been investigating the effectiveness of various types of advanced Flight Training Devices (FTD) on the transfer of technical ab initio pilot skills from the simulator to the operational environment in the aircraft.  One of our projects compares two cockpit specific, Transport Canada Level 5 FTDs, one with off-the-shelf LCD monitors for forward and side views up to 150 degrees (Fidelity Flight C-172S FTD) to one with a more complex out-of-the-window type wrap-around screen and projection system with a field of view of 220 degrees (Frasca Cessna 172 FTD).  The focus is on the training transfer ability of each simulator on total training time and each specific task or exercise required for solo flight and Private Pilot License.

Student and instructor in the RJ Flight Training Device

NexJ Express

At Seneca CDOT, work is underway to extend the open sourced framework: NexJ System’s Express Server.  A team of talented and committed students, under the supervision of Seneca faculty and NexJ specialists, enhances key aspects of the NexJ Express Server. Current projects such as JSON Adapter and PostgreSQL Adapter extend the database connectivity, advance the workflow of the web integration, and improve data security that are the hallmarks of all solutions delivered by the NexJ software products. Future projects will include the development of a REST Server, the SQLite and Hibernate adapters.

Processing.js

Whether for games, education, data visualization, or interactive media, graphics programming is hard.  In 2001 Ben Fry and Casey Reas at MIT Media Lab created a new programming language, Processing, designed for non-programmers. Although it captured and attracted artists, designers, and programmers worldwide, Processing wasn't designed to work with the web.  With later advances in the web, Mozilla's John Resig created a very successful prototype to demonstrate that Processing could be made to work online.  Seneca faculty and students, in partnership with Mozilla, completed Resig’s work, releasing Processing.js version 1.0 with more than 900 new features and fixes.  It is now fully compatible with the web, greatly expanding the reach of this powerful tool, and opening new doors for visual creators on the web.

A data visualization of Facebook's evolving privacy settings using Processing.js.  It was created by Matt McKeon, developer IBM Research's Visual Communication Lab.

Web Audio Data API

The transition from analog to digital audio brought with it a revolution for audio engineers and musicians. Digital audio made it possible for computer software to replace specialized audio hardware, thereby bringing audio editing to most computers and increasing the number of people working outside professional studios.  A similar watershed moment is now happening on the web.  Web browsers, like Mozilla Firefox, have become fast enough to support complex audio analysis and generation. Seneca faculty member, David Humphrey, has developed the world's first Web Audio Data API--a programming interface for web developers that makes sound programmable using web standards (e.g., simple HTML and JavaScript).  This new Web Audio API, included in Firefox 4, is opening the door to applications such as text-to-speech, sound visualization, and video game sound effects.

Popcorn.js

With recent inclusion of new technologies in the web such as audio and video, many artists are looking to work directly with the web.  Filmmakers, until recently, have been left out: film and video use a timeline-based approach, whereas the web favours documents with links. Mozilla is interested in changing this by working with Seneca in the Web Made Movies project.  With Popcorn.js. Seneca is building a web-based technology that overlays timeline capabilities - something more familiar to filmmakers.  Popcorn.js lets non-programmers create complex mashups of popular web services (e.g., Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, etc.) with video.  With Popcorn.js film is no longer bound to the frame of the video: now video and the web can coexist, and much richer artistic and educational works will be created that leverage the best of filmmaking and the web.

A demo built to showcase some of the features of popcorn.js.  Here, a video discusses the Internet, and Wikipedia and Google News articles are displayed to the right.

Fedora-ARM

Low-energy computing strategies are on everyone's radar, whether for extending battery life on mobile devices or reducing energy consumption in massive data centers. The ARM family of computer chips provides high performance while ‘sipping’ electricity: their use in mobile devices has driven production levels to billions of chips per year, and ARM chips are poised to drive new types of mobile devices and "green" servers. Seneca is leading the effort to port the Fedora Linux distribution to the ARM processor, providing a full software foundation for rapid innovation. One of the first projects to benefit from this effort will be The One Laptop Per Child project, which will employ Fedora-ARM on the next model of their educational computer.

ARM system showing an ARM chipboard

WebGL

A specification for hardware accelerated 3D graphics in the web page will soon be available on many of the major web browsers.  This has opened up a number of possibilities of creating web based applications that required increase graphics capabilities.  Seneca is currently working on three WebGL related projects.

XB-PointStream

Certain 3D devices such as 3D Scanners or LIDAR sensors represent 3D data in point clouds.  In essence, these are coloured points at specific positions in 3D space.  Partnering with Arius 3D, a Toronto based company with extensive background in 3D scanning technology, Seneca is developing XB-PointStream, a library that allows such data to be displayed  and viewed from multiple angles on a web page.  Viewers for these 3D "images" can easily rotate the object and view it from different angles and distances.  All this can be done directly on a webpage without any additional plug-ins.

Images scanned with a 3D scanner.  It is possible to rotate the lion and acorn and see them from different angles.

c3DL

WebGL allows hardware accelerated 3D graphics to be rendered on a web page.  However, 3D programming involves a good deal of mathematical manipulations and optimizations.  c3DL is a JavaScript library initially developed at Seneca as part of the CATGames research network.  It is designed to reduce some of the complexities involved with creation 3D web applications.

Click on the following link to view our study involving 11 colleges, all programs and all students who were involved in the First Semester of Fall 2007: CMP Final Report 2008