Intelligent Systems Application Studies

Advanced Manufacturing
Communities and Their Infrastructures
Environmental Monitoring and Control
Health Care Informatics
Laboratory Automation
Public Safety and Security
Robotics-Assisted Intervention

Application of Intelligent Systems Technologies to Advanced Manufacturing

REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute, National Research Council Canada

Application sector

The manufacturing sector consists of establishments engaged in “the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products.” The assembling of component parts of manufactured products is considered manufacturing, except in cases where the activity is appropriately classified as construction. Advanced manufacturing can be defined as “the insertion of new technology, improved processes, and management methods to improve the manufacturing of products.”

Report outline

Report Background
Introduction to the Application Sector
State of the Art in the Application Sector
Future Trends – Five- to Ten-Years
Canadian Strengths and Opportunities
Recommended Directions
Possible Social and Economic Benefits
Concluding Remarks

Major conclusions and recommendations

Based on the technology survey done by the study team and consultations with experts, the following areas are identified as priorities (in order of importance) for the next five years.

Integration of design, planning, monitoring, control, etc.;
Intelligent systems for mass customization (low volume and high variety);
Intelligent systems for manufacturing management;
Intelligent agents, collaboration and coordination technologies;
Modeling and simulation for product and process design;
Real time information for automated decision making; and
Intelligent systems for inspection, diagnosis and maintenance.

To make the list more manageable, the seven areas have been divided into two broadly defined categories: Planning and decision software, and process control-type software.

1 Planning and Decision Software

Real time information for automated decision making;
Integration of design, planning, monitoring, control, etc.;
Intelligent systems for manufacturing management;
Intelligent agents, collaboration and coordination technologies; and
Modeling and simulation for product and process design.

2 Process Control-type Software and Systems

Intelligent systems for mass customization (low volume and high variety); and,
Intelligent systems for inspection, diagnosis and maintenance.

Intelligent Systems Applications Study for Communities and Their Infrastructures

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REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Doyletech Corporation

Application sector

The sector encompasses but is not limited to transportation, environmental services such as water and wastewater treatment, structures, and integrated broadband communications systems.

Report outline

The report focuses on three main application areas, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Environment and Infrastructure, and Broadband Systems. Opportunities for R&D are presented for each area and recommended directions that could be taken. Economic and Social Benefits are also discussed for each of the areas. The report is organized into two documents, one a discussion paper that was used to facilitate discussion for the workshop and the final report with the workshop findings.

Major conclusions and recommendations

The following common applications were identified as having the potential to pertain to all three areas of study:
Planning tools for use in complex modeling systems.
Monitoring tools for sensor systems or infrastructure.
Advanced control systems and sensors.
Asset management and inventory.
Information services.

More specific potential application priorities for IS were identified in the following two application areas.

ITS – Demand Responsive Public Transit, Intelligent Control Room Operation, Traveler Information Systems.

Environmental, Infrastructure, and Energy Systems – Intelligent Water/Wastewater Technologies, Intelligent Building Management, Intelligent Infrastructure

Opportunities and Directions for Intelligent Systems in Environmental Monitoring and Control Applications

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REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Technology Surveys International Inc.

Application sector

An intelligent system in an environmental monitoring and control application is a system that emulates and actively employs some aspect of human intelligence (perception, reasoning and action) and whose primary purpose is monitoring and/or controlling harmful releases to the environment.

Report outline

The report covers an overview of Precarn’s larger effort to commission studies in several areas then continues into the specific objectives of the study and the study methodology. What follows then are definitions (intelligent systems, environment sector and core IS technologies in environmental monitoring and control applications); an overview of trends, Canadian strengths, opportunities, barriers and obstacles; recommended directions and priorities; and appendices.

Major conclusions and recommendations

The report groups recommendations into two main headings: Technology and Infrastructure. Under each are several specific priorities. Some are specific to Precarn while some are not considered within our mandate. However, the participants were encouraged to think freely and all ideas were captured.

The technology priorities (in order) are:

Sensors.
Data analysis and reasoning.
Market focus – Precarn focusing on prime user markets such as oil and gas, mining, electricity generation, resource management (energy, forestry, agriculture), transportation, manufacturing, municipal drinking water systems and wastewater treatment. Precarn is also encouraged to consider global issues such as climate change and the monitoring and control issues related to these.
Business imperative – Ensuring that IS solutions address real business or technical issues and support applied research as a means of commercializing the technologies. As well, the support of demonstration projects is needed in order to demonstrate the application of IS technologies as solutions.
Limiting high-end bias – a reference to the opportunities that are available in low-end technology applications, and the need for simple, cost-effective systems including sensors.

The infrastructure priorities are:

Developing a sound strategy for the application sector – refers to Precarn developing a long-term plan with identified priorities and plans driven by market pull. A focus on end-point applications is suggested.
Environmental benefits – the focus should not be just on jobs and the economy, but also the environment and public health and safety.
Fostering champions and receptors – engaging environmental NGO’s and others to ensure a receptive end-user community
Industry support and funding – giving industry, particularly the larger players, buy into the collaborative model bringing resources to the table. This is meant to encourage Precarn to get more widely known by way of increased communications and activities.
Public sector funding – advocating Precarn to ensure that adequate public sector funding for R&D, especially for SMEs is available.
Government as a role model – Promote the use of government contracts and procurement to support new monitoring and control technologies and processes.

Health Care Informatics

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REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Centre for Health and Policy Studies, University of Calgary

Application sector

Health care informatics is a unique and challenging field. It represents a convergence of the medical and clinical domains with the information technology sector. Even though information technology has played a vital role in other industries, such as the financial and transportation sectors, information technology has yet to make a similar impact in health care.

Although hospitals and health care clinics have employed many variations of health care information systems in the past, currently the “intelligent aspect” of these systems is extremely limited or altogether non-existent. Often these systems are based primarily on capturing data and redisplaying that data in much the same way as a paper chart. The intelligent aspect of these systems often equates to little more than changing the color of the lab value when the result is out of range, signaling alerts for potential drug interactions or providing simple rule-based guidelines for treatment. Although these are useful knowledge tools, they represent only the infancy of research, development and implementation of intelligent systems in the health care environment.

Report Outline

Introduction to Healthcare Informatics
Healthcare Informatics Intelligent Systems Applications
Social, Economic and Clinical Benefits
Potential Barriers
Canadian Strengths and Opportunities
Future Trends – Five- to Ten-Years
Recommended Directions
Recommended Reading
Bibliography

Major conclusions and recommendations

The conclusions have been grouped into three, broad, loosely defined categories. These groupings were not defined by the study team, but were created after the fact to aid discussion and future planning.

1 Education-based Recommendations

Provide additional education about intelligent systems to health care institutions and organizations including the potential benefits and potential for use in a variety of clinical and administrative environments.
Enhance training and education in academic institutes on intelligent systems technology and its application to health care.

2 Policy-related Recommendations

Increase support from health care institutions and organizations for joint partnerships and projects in the field of intelligent systems, with both commercial companies and academic researchers.
Provide Federal and Provincial incentives and funding for health informatics intelligent systems projects including the commercialization of these initiatives.
Encourage health care institutions and organizations to partner and support Canadian-based health informatics companies developing intelligent health informatics systems.
Continue to support national and international health informatics standards development and usage and encourage the development of open systems that allow for increased interoperability and task sharing between systems.

3 Procedural Recommendations

Develop simulated data sets based upon national and international health informatics standards that can be used for the research and development of intelligent health informatics systems in Canada.
Promote communication and collaboration between intelligent systems researchers, commercial health informatics companies and health care institutions and organizations.

Laboratory Automation

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REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Hickling Arthurs Low

Application sector

Laboratory automation uses mechanical and computer technologies to perform a scheduled series of tasks that increase the throughput, accuracy, and reliability of laboratory tests.

Report outline

The report describes an overview of Precarn’s larger effort to commission studies in several areas then continues into the specific objectives of the study, technologies, trends, benefits, Canadian strengths and opportunities and future directions.

Major conclusions and recommendations

While the report does discuss current technologies and trends, the report does not make any specific technology recommendations. The report makes specific recommendations for each of industry, academia, hospitals, government and Precarn. They are summarized below.

Industry. There is one recommendation: industry must be willing to take risks.
Academia must focus on basic research; be open to partnerships with industry, market/showcase their work to industry; and provide a return on public investment.
Hospitals must facilitate researchers’ access to large numbers of clinical samples for studies; and facilitate communications between ethics boards so that good ideas are not lost because researchers are worried about the administrative burden in using human tissue samples.
Government must ensure financial security of technology clusters so that highly trained individuals are not forced to leave (universities); often IP is an obstacle to collaboration – perhaps a “let’s see if this works first” attitude should be adopted; maintain competitive funding for academics; support exciting trends in industry; and support small companies with an SBIR-like program.
Precarn should ensure that key stakeholders are aligned; raise the profile of laboratory automation in general; monitor research trends etc. and hold workshops with industry and academia to showcase developing technologies and to identify market opportunities; be a tech transfer champion; and organize demonstration projects.

Applications of Intelligent Systems in Public Safety and Security

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Report prepared for Precarn by Actenum Corporation, with Greenley and Associates Incorporated

Application sector

The sector includes a variety of areas within the framework of Report preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation; including national workplace safety, protection of critical infrastructures, and preparation and responses to influenza, earthquakes, wildfires, hospital viruses, insect infestations, denial of service attacks, computer viruses, and intentional malice (crime and terrorism).

Report outline

The report defines the areas that PSS covers, defines the challenges in these areas and identifies specifically where Intelligent Systems might play a role in helping to solve the problems identified, and the type of technologies that might be used to accomplish this.

Major conclusions and recommendations

Conclusions drawn from the workshop forecast the increasing challenges that PSS will face in the future as more demands are made from all levels of government for applications of technology to help solve the needs of the sector. Intelligent systems are anticipated to play a significant role in helping to solve some of these problems.

The following recommendations were made:

Conduct a more thorough in-depth study of how IS can be employed in the PSS field.
Create both a “science for policy” and “policy for science” program.
Create the incentives to conduct interdisciplinary team-based R&D
Create a program for transferring defense technology to the civilian PSS sector
Ensure that technological solutions support peer to peer based organizations
Facilitate communication between government and industry.
PSS R&D programs should focus on “demand-pull” rather than “tech-push”
Facilitate cross-border integration.

Robotics-Assisted Intervention

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REPORT SYNOPSIS

Report prepared for Precarn by Hickling Arthurs Low, in association with C-STAR (Canadian Surgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics)

Application sector

Robotics-assisted intervention includes areas such as: robotics-assisted surgery and therapy, tele-surgery, robotic tools in diagnosis, and robotic delivery systems.

Report outline

The report describes an overview of Precarn’s larger effort to commission studies in several areas then continues into the specific objectives of the study, technologies, trends, limiting factors, Canadian strengths and recommended directions.

Major conclusions and recommendations

The report recommends five major groupings future work where opportunities lie. They are: systems, inputs and outputs, instruments and devices, data networks, and training.

At the system level, there are several directions that could be taken to change how robotics is used in a medical setting:

Standardization – hardware and software interfaces and system development rather than instruments;
Imaging – real-time including intra-operative information processing and automatic segmentation of images, more emphasis on interventional imaging as opposed to diagnostic, and improved visualization of the surgical field;
Planning and navigation – patient specific models for autonomous guidance or guiding the surgeon, better tissue models;
Communication – true image-guided interventions;
Intelligence – incorporate supervising sensors and software to monitor the surgical procedure and ensure safety.

For system inputs and outputs there are five items:

Reconstruct 3D data from 2D intraoperative images to develop patient-specific anatomical models;
User interfaces – to provide control and feedback to the surgeon;
Open interfaces – to imaging scanners and tracking devices;
Real-time tracking – no markers and reduced cost;
Improved realism – improved surgical simulators.

For instruments and devices there are six items:

Actuators and sensors that can undergo a common and less expensive sterilization process such as autoclaving;
Improve instrument dexterity;
Incorporate force sensors into devices;
Intelligent instruments that provide sensory control and guidance;
Instruments to track organ and tissue motion;
Task-specific instruments and devices.

For data networks there are three items:

Quality of service issues on commercial data networks;
Network performance in high latency environments;
Better video compression algorithms.

Finally, for training there are three items:

Make wider use of training simulators;
Train personnel specific to the use of computer-integrated systems in a medical setting;
Medical schools should be equipped with these technologies to hasten its acceptance in practice.

In order for this to occur, the report recommends that Precarn do the following:

Specifically develop an NCE in robotic-assisted intervention;
Organize workshops to design a mutually agreed upon implementation plan;
Lobby, advocate and connect key stakeholders and influencers with each other – act as an integrating force. Act as a catalyst to bring all sectors together in joint projects. Be a bridge between academia and industry, helping to bring proof-of-concept within reach to industry;
Ensure a Phase 4 for IRIS focused on medical robotics and interventions.

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