The First Annual Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Design Expo will be held on Tuesday, May 1st from 12:00 noon to 2:00pm in Breakiron 263.

AutoTrack

Student Design Team: Matt Hacker, Billy Raska, Tory Waterman

Faculty Advisor: Michael Thompson

For many years, a trained operator has been required to run a spotlight for theatrical and concert events.  The goal of this project is to create a system that can automatically track a stage performer utilizing an existing moving light. In the end, the system takes about an hour to install and less than four minutes to calibrate, though it does not properly track a stage performer while he or she is moving. At the end of two semesters of research, design, construction, coding, and troubleshooting, the AutoTrack system allows a moving light to find a stage performer within an average distance of 1.5 meters once the performer has stopped moving using a proprietary, radio-frequency-based tracking system and computer-based algorithms.

Blue Wave

Student Design Team: Brandon Bays, Christina Sfedu

Faculty Advisor: Rich Kozick

Blue Wave worked with a team of mechanical engineers in developing a hydrokinetic turbine system.  The mechanical engineers designed and fabricated the physical system that includes the propeller, shafts, bearings and a pulley system that connects to the motor.  Blue Wave Team developed systems to power the motor and sensors, tachometers to measure the rpm of the turbine and motor shafts, and a controller for turbine blade speed.

Project Hercules – Autonomous Rescue Helicopter

Student Design Team: Rabi Basnet, AJ You, Hao Zhang

Faculty Advisor: Robert Nickel

The goal of this project is to transform a remote controlled helicopter into an autonomous helicopter that can do a specific task autonomously. The proposed task for the autonomous helicopter is based on the first two missions of the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC).  IARC began in 1991 and since then it has created six different missions.  In most cases it takes a few years before a team can successfully complete a mission and a new one is created. The first mission simply required a fully autonomous robot to pick up a disc on one end of a field and move it to the other end of the field. The next mission required a fully autonomous robot to search a toxic waste dump for five toxic waste drums, map their locations, identify the contents of at least two of the drums, and bring back a sample from one of the drums. In our project we're attempting to generate hardware and software that can solve parts of the general problems involved in participating in the International Aerial Robotics Competition.

Smart Fiber

Student Design Team: Parinaz Hadi, Spencer Harris, William Kane, Brian Kenney

Faculty Advisor: Robert Nickel

This project is a biophysical status monitoring device that will be integrated with textiles to create a system that can be worn by firefighters or the military, and relay information about the person wearing it back to a remote central station. Once at this station, the information can be reviewed in an easy to read format, and make decisions based on this information. The parameters that are targeted in our current implementation are the body temperature and the heart rate of the person carrying the device.

Whalers Wireless

Student Design Team: Ross Bond, Peter Davis, Steven Kangos, Michael McPhee

Faculty Advisor: Robert Nickel

The "Whalers Wireless Senior Design Team" presents a network of small sensors that measure benchmarks of indoor comfort in real time throughout a building. The devices transmit the data to a remote location for storage and viewing. The data collected through this project can be used to save money by reducing energy consumption in buildings and increase the comfort level of room occupants. Studies have shown that people are more productive in comfortable environments, but the systems required for maintaining comfortable environments consume significant amounts of energy. Despite the cost of environment control, employees are the most expensive assets to an organization. A network of sensors deployed throughout a building is the first step towards an "intelligent" building that reduces the cost of keeping occupants comfortable by reacting to the conditions in the building on a room-by-room basis.