Grant: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants

New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) will purchase a coordinated information and communications technologies suite to provide platform capacity for applied research and experimental development activities in our flagship research program: Accessible Cities and Communities Enabled by Smart Solutions (ACCESS). The requested equipment falls under the categories of Internet of Things, Mobile Computing, Mixed Reality, Generative Artificial Intelligence, 3D Simulation Frameworks, and Cross-cutting hardware and software. The suite will run on our recently CFI-funded collaborative 5G network centre. The following group of current and future research projects will be served immediately and non-exclusively by this proposal: The Navigating Accessibility project will improve accessibility in public spaces and accommodations with a comprehensive mobile app, supporting cloud services, and complementary social networking. The GENIUS (Generative Intelligence Ultimate Simulator) project will provide a quantum leap in simulation-based use-of-force training for public-sector partners through mixed reality and generative AI and crucially allow for provision of training in remote communities. The SHIFT Energy project will produce advancements to intelligent energy storage and control system technologies designed by Mariner Partners to optimize energy usage in commercial buildings and district-scale applications. The Distributive Compute Protocol (DCP) project will speed up existing algorithms used by NBCC-Information and Communication Technologies Research Group (ICTRG) across many projects for image and event detection within IoT contexts using the DCP platform developed by Distributive and will provide a new regional capacity for large-scale parallel processing accessible by our industry and community partners. Principal Investigator and NBCC ICTRG Principal Research Scientist Dr. Bill McIver will use NBCC’s NSERC Mobilize funding to offer a formalized, paid research assistantship training program that meets the HQP needs of our province. One concrete action NBCC’s College Office of Research Enterprise is taking to promote a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible training environment is to make our lab spaces accessible to neurodiverse individuals through a sensors-based sensitivity mapping project that involves the digital twinning of our campus and assessment of accessibility-related sensory factors to improve the training experience for neurodiverse individuals