of remote-sensing research at the University of Alberta
est. 2017
R&D Team under MRC · University of Alberta
Observing the WORLD and benefiting HUMANITY, remotely.
ROSS — Remote Observation, Sensing & System
Any sensor · Any platform · Space-borne · Airborne · Robotic
AI, signal processing and communication turn remote signals into decisions, from research to real deployments.
Research
What we watch.
All 6 themes →R/01
Earth Observation
Wide-area ground monitoring from space. Satellite radar becomes trust-scored movement signals, watching roads, rail, dams, mines and critical infrastructure.
Since 2017 · w/ 3vG→
R/02
Agriculture & Environment
From pasture health and rice mapping to wildfire risk. AI on satellite and drone sensing in service of food, land and environment.
Sentinel-1/2 · FIRMS→
R/03
Autonomy & Perception
Multi-modal perception for platforms that sense on the move. Thermal-RGB fusion for detection and monitoring, from satellite to drone to robot.
From satellite to drone→
Emerging
R/04
Dual-Use & Defence
Civilian sensing carried into defence and dual-use contexts, in two streams. Dual-use sensing on one side, and cybersecurity with blockchain-secured data systems on the other.
Sensing · Cybersecurity→
Emerging
R/05
Health & Tele-medicine
Carrying the group's imaging and AI lineage into medical image analysis and remote, tele-medical sensing: denoising, segmentation, multi-modal fusion, and learning from scarce labels.
w/ Rehab Robotics Lab→
R/06
Digital Twin & Simulation
Synthetic worlds that train and test sensing AI. InSAR simulators, generative scene data and edge-ready models, moving toward living digital twins of monitored environments.
w/ MatrixLabs→
Our story
From zero to remote observation.
2015Study with us: the Multimedia Master's program, in four success stories
The co-op Multimedia MSc starts, with industry partners from day one.
2017Wide-area ground monitoring from spaceFirst Alberta funding from CARIC: InSAR ground monitoring from space.
NSERCFrom WAMS to trust scores: a decade of InSAR with 3vGA decade of InSAR with 3vG matures into trust-scored monitoring.
2021 to 2024LiDAR and 3D reconstruction: mapping the world in pointsTwo Mitacs projects with McElhanney: LiDAR streets and digital twins.
2023At AgSmart 2023: enhancing satellite data for agricultureEnhancing satellite data for agriculture, shown at AgSmart.
2026Introducing ROSS: from space to sites to rooms, to Forward Deployment Research on signalsROSS: a dedicated R&D team for remote observation.
2026ROSS Club First Event: Remote Sensing in Agriculture, by Joshua BillsonThe ROSS Club launches with its first event.
Deployed · R/01
An AI denoiser with a per-pixel trust score
Clients don't just get a movement map: they get movement plus a 0–1 trust score for every spot. AI cleaning cut new-site turnaround from ~1 month to a single InSAR pair.
Read the case →
Active · R/04
MatrixShield: adversarial security testing for AI agents
A dual-use security showcase: MatrixShield red-teams autonomous AI agents as a real adversary would, grading every response with an independent judge to turn agent risk into a board-ready 0-to-100 score. A collaboration led by Alvin (Xinyao) Sun with Matrix Labs.
Read the case →
Active · R/02
Large-scale rice mapping with vision transformers
Vision transformers on multi-temporal Sentinel-1 SAR time series map rice fields across nine regions of Brazil — 42,481 km² — outperforming LSTM, TFBS, SegFormer and SETR.
Read the case →
Active · R/01
Tessera: a smart remote-observation platform, from cloud to orbit
A smart remote-observation platform by MM2025 student Shuping Tan: draw an area of interest, pick an algorithm, and get a biomass, methane or marine-plastic map in minutes. Co-developed by MRC / University of Alberta and Matrix Labs.
Read the case →
Active · R/04
BAAS UA-MM Consortium: verifiable academic records on Hyperledger Fabric
A four-organization Hyperledger Fabric consortium built with MatrixLabs for the UofA Multimedia Master's program: role-scoped portals, one-signature verification, and privacy-preserving records.
Read the case →
Active · R/03
Drone-based cattle monitoring and weight prediction
A thermal-RGB fusion pipeline detects cattle from drones in field work with LandView and Serecon, and a Three-Stream DCNN predicts cattle weight from single-view images (example output 294 kg).
Read the case →Impact
Research that leaves the lab
~10 yrs
6
research themes, from earth observation to tele-medicine
what we watch
90+
peer-reviewed publications since 2018
google scholar
10+
researchers and students in the group today
PIs · postdocs · PhD · MSc
Log · Articles & Updates
Latest from the group
More updates →
2026-09-18
ROSS Club: From Sensing to Decisions, with Dr. Jiating Li
Club
→2026-08-24ROSS Club Event 1 recap: Remote Sensing in Agriculture
Club
→2026-07-22ROSS Club First Event: Remote Sensing in Agriculture, by Joshua Billson
Club
→2026-07-07Introducing ROSS: from space to sites to rooms, to Forward Deployment Research on signals
announcement
→2026-07-01How a machine reads an image: features, histograms and colour scales
Explainer
→2026-06-19From space to street: flood assessment on public map data
Earth Observation
→Educational
Learn the field.
More explainers →Short, informative reads on the ideas and methods behind the work, across every theme: from satellites to robots to the lab.
Explore
From the library.
Partners & collaborators
