Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Smart Plow is an innovative snow plow system under development by a Woodstock Ontario company. TheSmart Plow uses a digital recognition system to identify when and where the plow is to be deployed and whenit should be retracted. (For instance it can recognize the location of driveways and retract in time to avoidfilling them in.) This pioneering product is unique and has a prospective world-wide market, wherever thereare roads and snow.The challenge is to create a 90-120 second animation of the Smart Plow in operation. The animation will beused to assist in the design and stress testing of the prototype, in anticipating maintenance requirements, and inmarketing the project.Fanshawe College is undertaking the applied research component of the project. This involves investigatingand establishing the workflows, tools and skill sets required to move beyond rendered animations into areas ofsimulation using more advanced physics engines. Fanshawe's current 3D animation program focuses primarilyon modelling, rigging and animation for implementation in game engines such as Unity 3D. This project willrequire research into industry-standard tools for higher-level physics-based modelling and animation (e.g.,SolidWorks), and demonstrate how these tools can be integrated into the current curriculum and projectworkflows. Once the workflows are established for these types of projects, industry partnerships undertaken byFanshawe College will be a significant 'valued add' for company partners. This should be in great demand, asdigital simulation (along with more real-world animation scenarios) is an area of technical development that iscurrently not widely available to most subject matter experts.