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Description:

Our project goal was to make a robotic sprinkler system that can detect soil moisture content and check online weather forecasts to determine whether the ground needs to be watered. After completing our product, we were able to meet all of our requirements.

The two main parts of this design are the sprinkler robot and the base station. The base station checks the weather forecast to determine if the chance of precipitation is low enough to warrant watering for the day. If the chance of rain is high enough, then the robot will not be deployed; otherwise, it will send the robot out to measure the soil moisture at specific points on the lawn. The sprinkler robot measures the soil moisture by deploying a two-point-probe into the ground to measure resistance. This data is then sent wirelessly to the base station where it determines whether or not to water that area. If it is determined the area needs watering, then the robot will turn on its sprinkler system and water the area until the base station tells it to stop. After that, the robot moves on to the next area that the base station tells it to go to. When the robot is finished, it returns to the base station.

This product is commercially viable because it is a smart watering system that does not require the installation of multiple expensive pipes and probes. It both reduces the water waste of a traditional sprinkler system while still allowing for it to be transported to a new location.

This project was sponsored by MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Team members: Denis Kurtovic, Kevin Johnson, Jose L Orozco Jr

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Description: Our project idea is a solar powered beach chair. The idea is to take a plain old beach chair with a canopy and to turn it into the ultimate beach going machine. Our chair will have a solar panel canopy. This will have two functions: the first will be to extract power from the sun, with the second making sure that user will be shaded from the sun as much as possible; No one likes sunburn. The chair will have USB ports integrated into the arms. This will provide a lot of flexibility for the user. Suggested uses include charging a phone or e-reader, powering a USB speaker system, or any USB powered device. One unique challenge we anticipate will be making the electronics rugged, as sand and other debris could get into small places and interfere with the normal operation. This will have to be water resistant, as one quick rainstorm could ruin unprotected electronics. In addition, we will have to integrate everything into a package that will be small and portable enough to easily take to and from the beach. Here is a chair that we could start with: http://www.renetto.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/beach-chair-cat2.gif

Team members: Emily Mazzola, Andrew Gazdziak, Damen Toomey

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Description: The Multistage Coil Gun is a device which ejects a small projectile at great speeds solely through the use of electromagnetics. Our design incorporates a capacitor bank, an Arduino, PCB's, and a launch base with coil windings. The capacitor bank is primarily for storing all the charge which will be needed to generate the electromagnetic force through the coils. The PCB's and the Arduino function together to generate I/O signals and logic to determine the speed of the projectile. Besides the visual display, the purpose of our project is to create an educational tool to show how electromagnetic force, if harnessed properly, can be used for many applications.

Team members: Shashvat Nanavati, Yohan Ko, Jon Dagdagan

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Description: Our project is a slide guitar-like instrument with a single string. A microcontroller reads MIDI input and controls two motors to play the instrument. One motor moves a metal bar along the string to control the pitch and the second motor controls a wheel of guitar picks to strike the string. A guitar pickup convert the string vibrations to an analog signal, to which the microcontroller reads and applies audio effects. The resulting digital audio is converted back to an analog signal and sent to speakers. High resolution video available at http://youtu.be/TzvvpVJB7MI

Team members: Joel Spadin, Ruichen Zhao, Angad Bector

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Description: The purpose of the solar powered heated doghouse is to provide a solution to leaving your dog outside in a doghouse for the weekend, when cold temperatures are expected. The dog house will be powered entirely by solar panels on the roof. There will be heating elements on the floor. Insulating the dog house will be extremely important because with only solar power, we cannot afford wasted heat. We also plan on having some settings and safety features. There will be a temperature setting so the user can select how warm they want the doghouse. When the house becomes warmer than the owner set, the heat will be turned off. When the temperature becomes too cold, the heat will be turned on. We also plan on preventing the dog bowl from freezing, so the dog will be able to drink water. We are still debating about the most efficient method to do this. We also will be adding a fan to the dog house, so the dog will be more comfortable in the summer.

Team members: Lynn Deasey, Gurbaaz Sidhu, Krista Giacobazzi

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Description: We plan to create a specialized e-reader and separate director's remote control for the purposes of a music ensemble. Printing costs for a large marching band get out of control, and managing a large repertoire of sheet music can be difficult for a performer in a marching band setting. An e-reader suited for the marching band would tackle both of these problems; no printing and the ability to easily and quickly manage a large amount of music. Also, it can be hard to hear a conductor's commands during a loud sporting event. Commands to turn to a specific page, or to play louder or softer can often be difficult to audibly convey, and would be easier to interpret if they were visual. These functions can be implemented into the device, making it more than just an e-reader and more of a complete e-music-performance system. NOTE: File 1 is a ZIP file containing all the code executed by the Cypress PSoC microprocessor in our reader unit.

Team members: William Karcher, Hans Banerjee

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Description: The motive for our project is to build a Phasor Measurement Unit using National Instruments’ labVIEW and a single board RIO (programmable FPGA module). The PMU will measure RMS voltage, phase, and frequency of a signal and record the values with a precise timestamp retrieved from a GPS signal. Final product will be much cheaper and smaller in size than existing PMUs. As a result, more units are expected to be deployed, which could potentially increase the stability of the U.S. power grid. The collected data will be saved to a web server, where users will be able to either save the data to a computer, or observe the voltage signal from the wall. AC/DC and DC/DC converters will be added to power the single board RIO, GPS, and LEDs that will show the status of the PMU. Voltage input values will have to be stepped down with no error in order to meet the input range of the single board RIO as well.

Team members: Andy Yoon, Bogdan Pinte, Kenta Kirihara

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Description: Our project is to create a digital version of the Settlers of Catan board (Engineers of Catan). With this board, resources would be automatically totaled for players to make it easy to receive them at the beginning of each turn. The board would automatically generate the board configuration. It would also come with built-in dice to speed gameplay. The board would be able to identify individual pieces (type and owner). Pieces placed would automatically update the resource distribution. The game would flow almost exactly the same as the physical version.

Team members: Hannah Hasken, Adam Blackburn

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Description: Our project aims to design a Mail Notification System which can detect mails in the mailbox and send a notifying message with the arrival time to our homes and mobile phones. A thin notification device with sensors will be placed in the mailbox. When postman delivers mail, he/she will press corresponding method of delivery button on the system (e.g. (1) Left on porch, (2) At post office, etc.) to send a message to the owner. If none the options were selected, default message You got mail! with the arrival time will be sent. Small LCD monitor will be placed in the house to display messages, and once mails are picked up, owner can push the reset button on the LCD or notification device in the mailbox to reset the messages. This device would expedient our everyday lives by reducing time and energy wasted to check empty mailbox and picking up expected mail as soon as it arrives in the mailbox.

Team members: Ethan Ahn-Kang, Dickson Salim, Ryan Park

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Description: Our project is the design and construction a radio beacon for use on a CubeSAT-style satellite. This beacon is designed around stringent size, operating frequency, and power requirements inherent in satellite systems. The beacon interprets data from the satellite's computer, converts the data to Audio Frequency-Shift Key (AFSK) tones, and sends a signal down to a terrestrial receiver. The transmitter will send a signal at frequencies between 144-148MHz. The beacon consists of three main components: controller, modulator, and transmitter. The controller receives binary data, manage powers, and generates an AFSK signal for the modulator. The modulator then Frequency Modulates the AFSK signal for transmission. Finally, the data is then filtered an amplified for transmission down to earth.

Team members: Neal Makela [Web], Russell Jones, Jeffery Tlusty

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Description: The project is a data tracking device for Howard Schein to use to easily acquire accurate lap times and set rest periods during swim training. The device will eliminate the need for coaches to manually obtain lap times for swimmers. It will track swimming lap data within a waterproof box set next to the pool where swimmers will trigger a sensor each time their given lap is done. The device will consist of a three-piece wireless unit; one piece is to acquire and transmit data (lap times, rest times, etc…), another piece is to analyze and store data (lap length, lap times, rest times, etc…), and a final piece to adjust data variables (lap length, rest times, etc…). The device will provide swim coaches with accurate lap information transmitted wirelessly to their computers allowing the coach to track and adjust data.

Team members: Phil Niemerg, Ryan Turner, Lin Stacey

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Description: A stand alone two-wheeled (with an extra ball wheel for balance) robot that will take a picture file and draw the outline of the picture on the floor. There are two main parts: the image processing unit and the robot itself. After the image is read, we will convert it to an outline then vectorize it. Then we send the vectors to a microcontroller that will control the two motors, thus controlling the movement of the robot. Since the image doesn't have to be processed in real time, something like raspberry-pi or panda board will work. For the chalk, we will use an actuator in the middle of the robot, with a spring on top of it to make sure that the force exerted on the chalk is pretty much constant. To determine the position of the robot, encoders will be attached to the wheels (the position relative to the starting point is calculated).

Team members: Neil Christanto, Enyu Luo, Leonard Lim

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Description: For our project we are going to make a device that users can wear at a business meeting, etc. that will automatically exchange contact information when a handshake between to users is detected. Upon this handshake the exchange of info will happen wirelessly through a bluetooth transceiver. We plan to use a microcontroller as a host to control communications between the two devices and an IMU to detect the handshake between two parties. We hope to be able to add the ability to transfer a picture along with the contact information.

Team members: William Hanley, Kuanysh Samigollayev, Ambieca Saha

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Description: This project is based off of the two microphone probe presented by Professor Swenson and Dr. White. Our plan is to work closely with them at CERL to build a display unit to work with this two microphone probe. This unit will be complete with a GUI, user controls, and two to three BNC connectors for analog microphone input (whether it be two or three microphone probes). We also want to add features in this unit that are capable of: calibrating individual microphone probes, measuring acoustic pressure and particle velocity (the vibration of the particles). The underlying framework of this unit will be designed such that extra user defined features may be added easily. This allows for modularity in our project in such a way that we may also keep adding different measurement features, such as acoustic surface impedance measurement or acoustic surface reflection coefficient measurement. This modularity will also allow Professor Swenson or Dr. White to add on their own functions for their own purposes or for future senior design acoustic projects dealing with this two microphone probe.

Team members: Kevin Chen, Joseph Shim, Kristine Cabrera

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Description: The goal is to create a small flexible electronics transmitter, about the size of an average bandage, which can measure a person's vitals such as ECG (heart rate) and temperature. It will transmit this information over the air in real time to a receiver, where it will be displayed in a graph format.

Team members: Russell Geschrey, Matthew Frank

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Description: The goal of our project is to design an electronic chessboard that can recognize chessman pieces and is equipped with a lighting system showing potential moves with an AI algorithm. Once a piece is picked up, the chessboard should light up the available positions it can go, and indicate good moves and bad moves with different colors of LEDs, and afterwards detect the move the player conducts. The AI algorithm will be simple and be able to look one or two steps ahead.

Team members: Qianliang Liu, Ke Ma

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Description: Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) based on Electroencephalography (EEG) allow for the monitoring and analysis of ongoing brain activity in real time. The signals measured by this technology can be used to control user interfaces without the requirement of the human motor system. This technology can benefit those with paralysis and other severe disabilities. As of now, the majority of BCI systems are currently large and immobile, and therefore impractical for use in everyday life outside of a lab. There are several components to a BCI system such as data acquisition, a classification system, as well as stimulation, all of which must be made portable to create a portable BCI. To address this problem, we would like to focus on making a portable stimulator that can interact, through wifi, with the BCIs that are monitoring brain activity. The stimulator will consist of flickering LEDs at predefined frequencies, with attention to luminescence (we don't want our LEDs to blind the user so it must be at the right intensity for each user) as well as controls to adjust the frequencies while maintaining signals timing. Our design goals are to make the stimulation for the BCI and EEG portable and be integrated wirelessly so that users are not confined to just a lab setting and that the system could be tested and used in different environments.

Team members: Randy Lefkowitz, Siyuan Wu, Bonnie Chen

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Description: The idea is to modify an electric stove to allow it to be programmed to specific temperatures for different stages of the cooking process and prompt cooks to perform simple actions. Many cooking recipes call for alternating heat levels for different stages of cooking (high heat to brown meats, medium heat to sweat onions, low heat to simmer etc.) and actions such as stirring and turning over. Such instructions are not always easy to follow for novice cooks and even seasoned home cooks may spend some time going back and forth between cooking and checking the recipe to make sure that the instructions are followed correctly. The programmable electric stove helps the cook follow instructions from a given recipe. First, the recipe is broken down into stages based on the need to add a new ingredient, to perform a simple action, or to change the heat level. This recipe is then encoded and sent to the stove electronically (via Wi-Fi, NFC, USB, or ethernet). During the cooking process, the stove adjusts its temperature accordingly and prompts the cook to perform actions such as stirring or adding a new ingredient through an LCD screen or seven-segment display. Without having to worry about getting the heat right or when to perform a specific action, the programmable electric stove will make it a lot easier for aspiring cooks to try out new recipes. In addition, the temperature regulation allows the cook to work on something else during down times (e.g. 2 hour simmer with no extra ingredients needed).

Team members: Chng, Xiong Kai Benjamin, Ardy Winoto, Cheng Han Lee

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Description: The project goal is to design, fabricate, and test an electric golf bag and push/pull cart that will be able to keep your beverages cold through the back nine. We can do this using thermoelectric modules such as Peltier coolers. They will be powered by a rechargeable battery. This battery will be powered by solar panels on the bag. The battery will also be able to be charged through an external power source (i.e. wall outlet,) requiring an AC-DC converter. We would also like to add an electronic score card to go along with the USB port and cooling/heating system.

Team members: Cory Edwards, Jon Kinney, Harrison Kantner

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Description: Our project is to create a door that responds to the bark of a dog and opens the door. When the dog barks, a tweet with a link to a web server will be sent to the user. The server will host pictures of both sides of the door and allow the user to open the door. A microcontroller will be used with motion sensors to detect the dog in front of it, microphones, line sensors to ensure the door does not close on the dog, and cameras to send to the user to confirm the presence of the dog and not a potential intruder.

Team members: Ryan Madigan, Devraj Banerjee, Miles Cernauskas

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Description: We are building an interactive oversized breadboard aid for digital logic circuits. We plan to have an enlarged breadboard (with enlarged versions of common logic chips) capable of stepping through the design of some basic logic circuits (Such as: multiple input gates from 2 input gates, adder, multiplexer, decoder, comparator, flip flops). It will use LEDs to visually instruct students where to place chips and wires directly on the breadboard itself, as well as visual indicators (7 segment displays and LEDs) for when steps are completed or done improperly. The board will be able to detect an unfinished step or incorrectly done step by using a detection algorithm that includes chip recognition, location recognition, and faulty chip recognition. The idea is to write up a "lab manual" that goes along with the tool, laying out the different labs to be completed (which include building the previously mentioned simple circuits).

Team members: Norman Lee, Harrison Hilgers, Simon Huynh

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Description: The project aims to build a smart shopping cart that could follow the customer automatically by frequently tracking the customer's position. A signal receiver is embedded into the cart to provide information for the control unit to determine the cart's speed and route, and where it should stop. In case that the cart may be trapped in some narrow passages, an alarm will sound when the cart falls too much behind. Sensors are built in the cart to detect stationary objects such as shelves and walls. The cart will try to avoid them by making slight changes to its direction until it finds an accessible path. In addition, the cart is also able to track other moving objects. When the cart detects a moving obstacle in its way, the control unit makes the decision based on the following scheme: the cart always slows down to yield to customers, and it also slows down if other carts are moving at higher speeds; if the obstacle still presents at about one braking distance away, the cart needs to make a stop and it restarts until the way is cleared. The smart shopping cart also functions as a GPS that leads customers to the goods they are looking for. Four signal sources are placed at each corner of the store so that the cart could track its position by comparing the distances from those sources. Moreover, the cart is able to calculate the actual size of the store. Basic layout of the store is depicted based on the relative distances from the four signal sources. In this way, the cart can generate an actual map based on the map we design in a relative scale. A board with buttons representing different goods serves as the user interface for the cart. Customers can push these buttons to enter a shopping list. If they choose to enter items one by one, the cart will lead them to the product before they could enter a new one. If they put the entire list all at once, the cart is expected to figure out the most efficient path that covers all products they enter.

Team members: Di Fan, Ying He, Xuyang Yao

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Description: A common problem that anyone who loves music runs into is when they are listening to a song on their stereo in one room, but they need to walk to another room for a moment. What do you do to avoid this problem? Some turn up their stereo really loud so that they can hear it from further away, and some grimace and hurry so that they only miss 20 seconds of their favorite song. But what if there was a way to adjust the volume of the stereo based on the distance that the listener is from it? That is exactly what our senior project addresses. With our Automatic Volume Control system, the volume of any sound system can be adjusted simply by the distance that the listener is from it so that no matter what distance they are from it, it sounds about the same volume. This system will also be able to function with different speakers in different rooms, so that the closer speakers play the music as you move from one room to the other. By carrying an active device like a smart phone, the listener’s position will always be known relative to the speakers in order for this system to function.

Team members: Chris Goulet, Roland Le Grand, Eric Davila

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Description: Many precious personal belongings, either by theft or carelessness, are easily lost and will cause serious damage. According to a report by TechCrunch: US citizen, on average, lost one smart phone annually, which will cause 30 billion dollar loss of money in 2012. Not to mention the lost of wallet, which may cause the lost of your driving license, cash and credit cards. Our idea is to use wireless communication technology to remarkably decrease the lost rating of those important items you carry. Since those personal belongings(i.e. wallet, cell-phone, keychain...) are supposed to be very close to you, we would pair them up(use transmitters and receiver) and make a portable device that could be easily hooked up/carried in your jacket/coats. This device will detect if any of the personal belongings are too far from you (for example more than 1 meter) and send out an alarm. The device should also be able to turned on/off manually with password. In case of theft, the stealer may trying to run away, so the alarm beep will also come from the losing personal belongings, with the alarm volume proportional to the distance between you and the potentially losing item. This portable device should be able to pair up with multiple personal belongings, and the paired up transmitter on the personal belongings should be very small and light-weight, but also able to sent out high-volume alarm.

Team members: Wenhao Li, Yunchi Sun, Xiying wang

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Description: We are going to build a medial device to monitor the vital signs of soldiers out in the field. We will build a harness that will monitor the vitals and wirelessly transmit the data to a range of 100m to a base station. The transmitted data will be stored in this centralized location for further analysis. We will measure heart rate, body temeperature, pulse oximetry and maybe blood pressure analysis. Our goal is to ensure that the device operates for 24 to 36 hours. We also plan to incorporate a display (maybe TI watch, or LCD, or simple LED lighting) for the soldier to monitor his own health. We also want to minimize weight of our sensors and components including the battery because the soldier already carries quite a bit of weight already.

Team members: Sanghee Sam Seo, Santhosh Vairavan, Yash Kulkarni

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Description: My team want to build a automatic heat source finding laptop cooling pad. In contrast to traditional cooling pad, it utilizes only one fan for dissipating the heat. It would locate the where the source of the heat located on the laptop and find that position. It then automatically moves the fan to that location. we can add other functions to this pad such as controlling the speed of the fan or adding a remote USB terminal to your compute for you to turn it off or on, and detect the surface temperature of the part where the fan is blowing. We plan on using infrared red remote sensors. There are five sensors on the fan. Top, bottom, left, right, middle. The fan would move towards to the sensor with the highest temperature. If five sensor senses the same temperature or the middle sensor have the highest temperature, the fan would just stay at it's position. The fan is attached to a track. The track can move horizontally and vertically on the track. Data will be gathered from the sensor and sent to a microcontroler to feed back information to whatever interface its connected to. We would like to incorporate the LED key board lamp and the visual indicator of fan speed to our the cooling pad. We would also create a load monitor that can tell the fan to increase its speed preemptively to act as an feed forward control system.

Team members: Xuandong Xu, Yuan Yao, Jifei Xu

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Description: The motivation for this project is to provide privacy for those making cell phone calls in public spaces. Achieving audio isolation would pose great benefits to both the cell phone user as well as those surrounding him/her. We will be investigating the feasibility of using active noise cancellation to suppress the voice of a cell phone user globally. This method of isolation employs destructive interference and hinges on the collocation of both the initial sound source and the source of noise cancellation in order to achieve the desired global noise control. Furthermore, the destructively interfering signal must maintain equal amplitude with the initial signal over all space in order to provide complete cancellation. The investigation will be performed at first on a dummy object that is roughly the size of a standard cell phone. Microphones along with supporting circuitry will be located on the dummy cell phone in order to obtain the initial signal (speaker's voice). The signal will then be passed to a digital signal processor which will change its phase by 180 degrees. Finally, speakers on the back of the dummy cell phone will be used to emit this inverted signal in order to actively cancel the person's voice in the far field. A characterization of the pattern of spatial intensity of the human voice will be performed, and different speaker placements will be studied in hope of providing the best cancellation over a large area surrounding the person using the phone.

Team members: Joel Godard, Hershed Tilak

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Description: Currently, clinical simulators (full-body, robotic electromechanical devices) rely on computer-based input through a laptop computer. The computer interface is a complex series of screen-based inputs that are typically handled through keystrokes and the use of a mouse. The goal of this project will be to design and create a new more efficient interface for the Laerdal simulators for medical training with Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center. Currently commands are performed through a series of keystrokes and mouse actions. Along with the keyboard and mouse, the simulator operator will also have a set of dials and a capacitive touch screen to select modes and make adjustments to the simulation. The additional hardware will communicate with the existing Laerdal software through USB.

Team members: Tommy Shiou [Web], Nick Cialdella [Web]

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Description: We are making a glove which will be able to teach a person sign language. The vocabulary will consist of the alphabet and round about 20-30 words. It will have gyroscopes in each of the fingers and flex sensors throughout the length of the fingers to know the position of the fingers and that of the hands relative to each other. The information will be sent to a microcontroller via bluetooth which will determine what the person has said and check if the actions performed were correct. If the gesture is correct the LEDs (that will run along the back of your fingers) will turn green, otherwise they will be red, if only one finger is out of place in your gesture only the leds running along that finger will remain red. The other mechanism we are implementing for feedback control is haptic feedback, using a vibration motor in every glove finger, it will vibrate to alert you about the incorrect placement of your finger. The app will have a practice mode through which you can practice the gestures, and once you are confident that you know the actions, you can test yourself and the app will tell you how you fared.

Team members: Reebbhaa Mehta, Mayapati Tiwari, Daniel Fong

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Description: When muscles skeletal muscles contract, the number of motor units increases and the frequency of the firing of the motor units increases. When a motor unit, or motor neuron, fires, the nerve contracts the muscle fiber. An action potential is transmitted across the neuromuscular junction and into the muscle fibers. This causes an increase in electric potential which can be detected on the surface of the skin with a surface electromyograph. The activity of several motor units is collected through the EMG. Depending on the size of the muscle, the electric potential from the muscle will be around 200-300µV. Also it has been found that converse relationship between increasing force and increasing median power frequency. Our group's idea is to create an interface which uses an EMG to monitor muscle fatigue. There are two main parts: the EMG hardware/software, and the physical interface itself. As muscular contractions are sustained, the spectrum of the electric signal shifts to the left (lower frequencies) The EMG will utilize the median power frequency of the muscle motor units to serve as an index of fatigue. The physical interface will interpret this and display in the form of LEDs and sound. There are many biological applications including rehabilitation, physical therapy, and research. Our project aims to make an inexpensive application for the general gym-going public. With our device, users can determine how effective their workouts are. Also, it can be used to prevent overtraining.

Team members: Tushar Bhushan, Roman Levitas, Shay Chen

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Description: The project we are planning to do is a small electronic part management system. Because there are many students go to lab every day and they will ask TA for small electronic part such as resistors or chips, so it hard for TA or lab staff to manage the electronic part in the lab. For my own experiment, several times I went to ask for some electronic part and TA check the drawer and told me it's out of stock. Our system will help to prevent and solve this kind of problems. The basic function of this system is to help the lab staffs know how many numbers of each electronic part left in the drawer and help them manage the lab much easier. We will place a metal bar on each drawer and it will connect the 2 wires on the back of the drawer, When the drawer is opened, the metal bar and wires disconnect and there will be a signal sent to the UI and UI will show a message such as "7404 chips has been choose, please enter the number added or taken." If we want to add, press + button first. If we want to take, press - button first. Then we can enter the number through a numeric keyboard. Finally, we use XBEE to transfer the changes of item numbers to the inventory in the computer.

Team members: Chao Cao, Chengcheng Huang

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Description: Our group will design the main power converter to be used in UIUC's Illinisat-2 project (more info at http://cubesat.ae.illinois.edu/). The converter will employ maximum power point tracking to charge the satellite's Li-Ion batteries. Due to the modular nature of the Cubesat, the converter must be adaptable to different sizes of satellite with different numbers of solar cells. The converter must employ control at both the input and output sides: the input side to implement the maximum power point algorithm, and the output side to track the battery voltage and stop charging when it reaches its safe upper voltage limit. The batteries and solar cells have been selected, but the battery configuration (including the possibility of a backup battery that automatically takes over in case of main battery failure) and converter design are the scope of this project. There are a couple of unique challenges associated with the fact that the converter will be inside a very small bus and subjected to the space environment.

Team members: Samuel Kearney, Rachit Goel, Roberto Suarez

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Description: The goal of the project is to create a device to track the Illinois river otter movement patterns. The device will periodically acquire and store its GPS (global positioning system) coordinate. When the otter is within the download range of the base station, it will automatically relay the GPS data to the stations memory using an RF transceiver. The device will need to be sub-cutaneous so as to minimize risk of injury to the otter, while ensuring the device is secured to the otter.

Team members: Bilal Gabula, Osayanmo Robert Osarenkhoe

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Description: The current UIUC Formula Electric racecar has lacks reliable data display. The only data displayed is a row of LEDs connected to a potentiometer on the gas pedal. The potentiometer's readings is the number of lit LEDs, from this the driver must estimate the current to the motor. From this current, the driver then guesses what the speed is. Our task is to build them a data acquisition system, collecting and displaying realtime data either on the dashboard or on the steering wheel, from the following sensors: Temperature - Motor, batteries, coolant. Motor speed. Vehicle speed. Battery pack voltage and current. All tires' pressures. At the end of the project, on our demo deadline (because their first race is 19-June, their deadline is early June).We might install the system on the previous year's racecar for demo.

Team members: Mohan Sha, Shaik Mohammad Farooq, Raviraj Mahajan

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Description: The goal of this project is to create a hardware user interface to control medical simulations in real-time. The design will focus on allowing the technician to perform adjustments in an ergonomic and unobtrusive way. A similar project was attempted in the past, however this project will enable more types of controls (heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, etc), explore new form factors (touch panel, foot controller, hand-held, etc), and support interaction with the software used to run the simulations.

Team members: Jian Chen, Michal Pawel Rys, Tanmay Mishra

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Description: Our goal is to build a safe and convenient medical waste bin for research labs and hospitals. The waste bin will be designed to open automatically only when people intend to drop off the waste, and otherwise closed and maintained tightly. The bag of trash will be automatically sealed and dropped when specific weight limit is achieved, and a new bag will be set in position at the same time. There will also be a liquid leak detection sensor on the bottom of the waste bin in case the garbage bag breaks, and a UV sterilizer to deal with the possibly dangerous leak.

Team members: Yanqiu Yin, Qiong Hu, Zekun Liu

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Description: Our goal of this project is to design an epidermal electronics system (EES) and its application for human-machine interface. Owing to micro/nanotechnology development, there are many types of motion sensors such as Nintendo Wii game controller. However, users still need to hold the controller on hand in order to control it. Here, I wish to address this issue by directly mounting the electronic system onto skin epidermis, such that human motions can be directly translated into a controlling system. The one of the main point of epidermal device is that this device will follow the skin motion so that it guarantees formal skin contact. Therefore, it will reduce motional defects. This project will be separate into three parts: epidermal EMG Sensor, Signal Conditioning Unit, and programming.

Team members: Woo Sik Lee, Nithin Reddy, okwon6@illinois.edu

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Description: Description: We are planning to build two toy cars. One is remotely controlled by us and the other chasing car will have the ability to detect the position, speed and direction of the former car, and automatically calculate the shortest path to chase it. The chasing car will be controlled by a microcontroller with algorithm implemented by us. It collects information from the sensors we talked above. The algorithm will decide the optimal solution to chase the running car. We are adding some obstacles along the way. As long as the chasing car cannot detect the running car (either out of range or blocked by obstacles), we enable the camera hanging on the ceiling (like a satellite or helicopter) and help the chasing car to locate the running car. Implementation details: 1. None of us have the knowledge of navigational algorithm. But its almost a solved problem. We have done some research. Many seem work well. It is to find the chased car's trajectory through some points that could form a connected polygonal and try control the chasing car to encounter the chased car. And we will continue do research for better algorithm. 2. We now are thinking to use some proximity sensors to detect the 180degree angle in front of the chasing car. 3. For the ceiling camera, we use image processing to locate the car. We are thinking to paint the chased car into one simple color so that it is easier to be located.

Team members: Hai Chi, Zhe Ji

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Description: Our project goal is to create a motorized longboard that can be controlled using a RC controller-like joystick that will tell the longboard to go forward or go backwards. The controller will be designed to be used in one hand. It will use an Arduino and controllers to control the motors. The board will incorporate regenerative braking that reverts kinetic energy back into usable power for the lithium battery, a DC brushless motor capable of turning both ways, and a pressure sensitive kill switch that turns off the motor when a rider is not detected. Another unique aspect of our board is that it will use sensors or an active drive that will aid in turning by turning down the PWM or by speeding up the outer wheel and slowing down the inner wheel once a turn is identified.

Team members: Daniel Moon, Leon Ko, Kevin Lee

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Description: Our project goal is to make a home power budget control system for saving energy in homes or apartment more efficiently. The system will allow users to control electricity directly or remotely in particular rooms or anywhere in the entire house. The system includes one central controlled box (the brain of control system) and a sensor boxes. The project will focus on the processing control system. The controller will be able to navigate power consumption in the house based on the budget management (dynamic prioritization). The goal is to avoid going over a certain power limit. Supposed there are a few rooms having multiple outlets inside. We will assign priority to each room or each outlet. The rooms/outlets with lower priority will be restricted with a power limit. The highest priority room/outlet will have the power before anything happens. The sensor system will be implemented in those small boxes which placed in each room. The small boxes will be built with the microcontroller, IR sensors, current sensors, and bluetooth/RF transceivers. If someone is in the room, the sensor system will recognize and send the signal to the center box and bump up the priority a bit. And the setting will add into the schedule of the center boxes. After a certain amount of time, if there is no one in the particular area, the system will automatically turn off the power to that area. We will program the control box to remember these setting and generate a schedule to manage and distribute power efficiently. Building the brain - a control unit is the core of this project. To design the learning ability of the brain system, we will figure out the algorithm and the decision making to run on inexpensive pieces of hardware. Combining the features (Learning ability and priority setting) makes home budget saving more optimal and affordable.

Team members: Hai Vo, Vi Tran, Ho Chuen Tsang

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Description: Our interdisciplinary project sponsored by Boeing will focus on utilizing Near Field Communication technology to benefit the company's part verification process as well as inventory tasks. NFC tags can contain readable/rewriteable data; we will place these tags on any high-valued parts that are worth the effective cost of tracking. The data in these tags will contain the origin of the part, whether or not the part was tested, which specific employee verified the part, etc. These tags will be the basis for a novel system that allows for easy readability of the entire history of a given part from any NFC device (Smartphones, tablets, etc). That being said, our team will focus on the part verification application, which is to make sure that any high value parts are not tempered with and has only been accessed by the people who were supposed to access it. This could assure the safety and security of high value applications and potentially prevent any part failures or information theft.The technology behind these respective applications will be implemented as well as a business analysis of their financial viability.

Team members: Alper O. Olcay, Jinjoo Nam, Vigneshwar Karthikeyan

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Description: If one is to video record a table meeting in a medium sized room and the video needs to always capture the person who is speaking. It is hard to do that without a cameraman. The product will provide a solution to this problem without hiring a cameraman. Camera will be placed on a 360 degree rotational base which can be placed at the center of the table. The base is surrounded by electret microphones. Where the sound is coming from can be detected by analyzing the loudness at each microphone. And a micro-controller will control a motor to rotate the camera to face itself to the speaker. It will have two cameras working together,, and the two cameras can be rotating to different angles and automatically generate splitscreen if two people are talking (e.g. one asking question & one answering). Otherwise only one camera will be recording.

Team members: Jiehan Yao, Yuxiao Lu, Qi Yang

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Description: Our interdisciplinary project sponsored by Boeing will focus on utilizing Near Field Communication technology to benefit the company’s part verification process as well as inventory tasks. NFC tags can contain readable/rewriteable data; we will place these tags on any high-valued parts that are worth the effective cost of tracking. The data in these tags will contain the origin of the part, whether or not the part was tested, which specific employee verified the part, etc. These tags will be the basis for a novel system that allows for easy readability of the entire history of a given part from any NFC device (Smartphones, tablets, etc). We are going to work as two teams and we are awaiting our preliminary contact with the client for further verification of division amongst the two teams. Our team will focus on the inventory application, while the other team will focus on the part verification application. The inventory application will attempt to allow for an easier and more intelligent assembly process. To do this, information including delivery and arrival time, origin of inventory, employees responsible for inventory, etc will be embedded in NFC chips. The technology behind these respective applications will be implemented as well as a business analysis of their financial viability. The entire project scope (as known to us at this time) is repeated below for completion. Technical: Develop prototype parts tracking system utilizing smart phone and NFC tag technology. Identify technical advantages and constraints that may limit or expand the use of NFC as a part marking technology. Prototype new capabilities that are enabled by the use of the smart phone, including things such as adaptive reality using the camera phone, connected communications, secure information exchange, phone processing power, and open software development kits. Business Case Analysis: Create current state business analysis of tracking aircraft parts via manual processes and excel spreadsheets. Create business case of utilizing standard RFID tags to track aircraft parts. Create business case analysis of tracking parts via NFC smart phone technology. Compare and contrast the various strategies relating to aircraft part tracking. Equipment costs, size, availability, ease of use, technology familiarity, user experience, labor improvements, product lifecycles, etc. will be inputs into the business case that will drive a decision for one of the methods. Usage scenarios: 1. Part verification: use app to access additional data regarding parts for verification in process or on shop floor. 2. Inventory task resources: ensure correct parts and tools are present to complete a given task. 3. Push/pull alerts from database system regarding part notifications 4. Tag work floor features to provide dynamic source for additional information i. couple work orders to resources ii. automate quality inspection signoffs

Team members: James Kim, Shao-Chi Ou Yang, Neil Misak

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Description: Nowadays, people use their hands to control modern computing systems as well as consumer electronics. We type keyboards, or swipe on tablets with our fingers as a means of input. Many other people also take the advantage of voice control everyday which is being considered as one of the very innovative inputting methods. Based on the trend of how technology gets developed today, we see the next step of inputting as we getting use of our brains. Imagine that we need to take a look at the next step of a recipe when we get our hands messed with all the food while cooking. Swiping on the iPad then sounds very tedious. Instead, would it be nice to do so by just staring at a specific region on the screen and turn to another page of cookbook. This region blinks at a predefined frequency. By looking at it, our brains will also "blink" at the same frequency and the generated signals can be captured and distinguished from other signals with different frequencies, which will consequently allows various control options. (not just flipping recipe pages) Our goal of this project is to build a prototype of brain-controlled portable programmable embedded system with a LCD screen that will satisfy basic functionality of our everyday computation and its user interface. With the help of electroencephalography, our device will be built on top of a micro-controller which reads input from various signals from our brains and thus supports hands-free interactions between users and computing system which will be reflected on a built-in LCD display. A simple diagram can be found here which illustrates the basic idea of this project: http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a599/sc21cn/ScreenShot2013-01-31at25324PM_zps11908c3f.png [Note that our project consists of the micro-controller, LCD screen along with some other hardware components and wireless part. The graph represents what we propose to do within this semester (a sort of prototype). However, it may be made more advanced in the future, such as integrating the screen onto the glasses or caps people wear everyday. But it is just for future consideration.]

Team members: Xuanyu Zhong, Yujie Chen, Shiyang Liu

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Description: This project aims to build a smart secure portable electronic key. This key will be activated after verification from a finger print reader. After it goes through the fingerprint reader and gets activated, we will send an encrypted verification to the panel with switches for different locks to unlock. By pressing one of these switches, we will be able to then transmit a signal (via RF/Bluetooth) to the particular lock we require to open. This signal will have an encryption key that will prevent physical hacking as the receiver requires this key to get activated. After successful verification of this key the respective lock will be able to click open. The locks that we will be using will have electric and mechanical locking components. This will be a really safe (and portable at the same time) option as there is no easy way to tamper with this kind of lock. If some unauthorized person tries to access the reader to open the lock, it will not send a signal. Thus if someone tries to put a high signal directly, the receiver will not get activated as the encryption key would not have been verified yet. It will be our aim to make it as compact and marketable by the end of the project.

Team members: Akshay Chanana, Aashay Shah

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Description: Hi, the scope of our project involves a vehicle with webcam that can be controlled remotely by Wifi/4G. We will also build a website which will allow users such as tourists to log in and take control of the vehicle and take a virtual time of their site of interest in real time. After the 'tour', the user can log out and the next user can take control of the vehicle. There are some cool features for our project: 1. Our vehicle has a collision avoidance system to protect our car from unpredictable hazards. To implement this feature, we will use Ultrasonic sensors to build an environment detector. it will feedback data to our microcontroller and the microcontroller will send out control signal to either change the direction of the car to avoid the object or make it stop. 2. Our vehicle has two driving modes: manual control by keyboard or automatic control via GPS navigation system. To implement this feature, we will use a GPS and program some patterns for the car to follow. 3. Our vehicle has a path memory feature. It will remember the path and go back to where it is started. This feature will allow users simply log out the website when the tour is finished and do not need to drive the car back. To implement this feature, we will use our microcontroller to remember the speed and direction of our motor, and run it backward. 4. Our vehicle can tour many people at the same time. The webcam can be viewed by different people at different places from different web pages at the same time.

Team members: Kecheng Liu, Yigao Shao, Yubo Liu

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Description: There has been a push toward less dependence on waiters at restaurants. For example, Chili's and Old Chicago's currently support a product called "Ziosk" on every table; a fully-colored, multi-functional, touch-screen tablet that allows restaurant customers to pay the bill and play games from the convenience of their seat. Our idea is to take this idea in a different direction, and implement a low-cost solution to restaurants using an NFC-enabled menu. Since NFC technology is very low-profile, the menus created would look and feel like any other menu on the market. Our device will allow a customer to use our specifically-designed NFC-reader to select their menu items by hovering over the NFC tag (this can be placed underneath a picture of the item or beside the item). The menu will contain an RF module that will send the order directly to the kitchen, reducing the work that waiters need to do. This will allow the restaurant to hire less waiters and will also improve any miscommunication between server and patron. Imagine if you are in a foreign country where you do not speak a lick of the native language. Our solution will allow you to intuitively point and select the food items you want, keeping difficult communication between server and guest as minimal as possible. This product is not designed to completely replace wait staff--it is simply an additional feature that will allow orders to queue efficiently and a reduction in the total number of workers that a restaurant includes on its payroll.

Team members: Patrick Ding, Michael Chan, Patric Takagi

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Description: Our project is concerned with developing a method and related hardware to measure acoustic impedances of various surfaces. The set up must meet the following specifications: - Give accurate, consistent measurements of impedance at low frequencies: at least under 200 Hz, ideally under 100 Hz. - Small profile, light weight - Orientation that allows can be placed very close to the surface being measured to give more accurate values for acoustic impedance. - Either a monopole or (true) dipole microphone setup. Which one we pick would have very drastic effects on what sort of processing is necessary on the software end and what information - Capability to measure pressure gradient and/or particle velocity as a means of obtaining impedance. Depending on what is found after more research and consulting, it may also be necessary to modify the source signal or possibly see if ambient noise alone would be feasible to extract acoustic information. Possible tasks: use of an anechoic chamber (either in Everitt or in CERL) to calibrate and test the behavior of any prototype in the laboratory. Simulation of the microphone geometry and its effect on sound pressure level profiles (in COMSOL or a similar E&M finite element analysis program).

Team members: Kevin Looby, Anna Czerepak

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Description: My project deals with developing a system of lights that respond to music heard in the air. The sound will be processed for its tempo, amplitude, and frequency. The lights will be movable such that new arrays of the light combinations can be displayed. The goal is to make a cheap, durable lighting system that engages multiple senses. Furthermore, some of the light patterns will be controlled by the user, such that randomness and personal expression are present in each viewing.

Team members: Andy Groesch

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Description: Ever had a hard time choosing which bar to go because you don't know whether it's gonna be a fund time or your type of bar? Well, we have come up with A Different Kind of "Bar"-O-Meter to tell you about what's going on at your favorite bars! We plan on installing weight sensors under the floors at bars to gather our raw data on the total weight at each bar. After data collection, we plan on using simple algorithms to calculate the estimated number of people at the bar. Additionally, the atmosphere (i.e. just chillin' around or busting out my moves) could be determined by taking a look at the fluctuation of the weight data. Ultimately, these data will be transmitted and uploaded to a website so that people can easily see what's the most popular place to go! Data Collection: we hope to achieve this by installing multiple weight sensors underneath the floors. Our initial thought is to employ a variable resistor controlled by the weight. If this does not provide the level of accuracy we desire, we will modify our approach to accomplish a reasonable result. Additionally, by the time we submit our proposal, we also hope to decide on the way that we power these sensors. To make these devices more economical, we desire to design it in a way that would only require an external battery that needs to be replaced once a year. There are, however, other alternatives to power such system, i.e. wall powered, self-powered, etc. Data Transmission: to ensure the data quality while lowering the cost, we would use wires to transmit the data. The resistance of the variable resistors would be measured and then the data will be transmitted to a centrally located box to store the data and wirelessly (via bluetooth) upload to a computer. Data Output: The estimated number of people could be obtained by dividing the total net weight by the average weight of an adult. Also, the weight fluctuation would dictate the type of atmosphere at the bar. The output will be readily available on a social networking site.

Team members: Chen Hu, Tuo Liu, Yimimg Song

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Description:

Team members: matthe11@illinois.edu