People :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

People

TA Office Hours

Held weekly in the senior design lab (ECEB 2070/2072). NOTE:

Blue names are office hours held for only 30 minutes. The rest are for 1 hour.

Names highlighted in orange are additional office hours available up to the due date of the soldering assignment.

There are no office hours during the weeks of board reviews or final demos.

Chat Room

Ask technical questions here:

Spring 2023 Instructors

Name Area
Prof. Arne Fliflet (Instructor)
3056
afliflet@illinois.edu
microwave generation and applications
Prof. Viktor Gruev (Instructor)

vgruev@illinois.edu
Prof. Rakesh Kumar (Instructor)

rakeshk@illinois.edu
Prof. Olga Mironenko (Instructor)

olgamiro@illinois.edu
Prof. Michael Oelze (Instructor)
ECEB 2056
oelze@illinois.edu
Biomedical Imaging, Acoustics, Nondestructive Testing
Ugur Akcal (TA)

makcal2@illinois.edu
Computer Vision, Robotics, Control Theory, Machine Learning
Nikhil Arora (TA)

na32@illinois.edu
Mechanical Design, Automotive Technologies, Additive Manufacturing
Sainath Barbhai (TA)

barbhai2@illinois.edu
Design Engineering, Finite Element Method, Sensors and Actuators
Vishal Dayalan (TA)

vishald2@illinois.edu
Mechanical Engineering, Data Science and Analytics, Design Modeling and Simulation
Prannoy Kathiresan (TA)

prannoy2@illinois.edu
Mechanical engineering, automotive, thermal engineering, robotics, data science.
Zicheng Ma (TA)

zicheng5@illinois.edu
Distributed systems, Database systems, Computer vision
Abhisheka Mathur Sekar (TA)

am113@illinois.edu
Mechanical Engineering, Design, Modelling and Simulation, Fluid Mechanics, MRI
Jason Paximadas (TA)

jop2@illinois.edu
Power electronics, control, and instrumentation
Matthew Qi (TA)

mqi6@illinois.edu
Power Electronics
Akshatkumar Sanatbhai Sanghvi (TA)

sanghvi8@illinois.edu
Data Science and Machine Learning
Sarath Saroj (TA)

ssaroj2@illinois.edu
Hanyin Shao (TA)

hanyins2@illinois.edu
Natural language processing/Machine learning
Dushyant Singh Udawat (TA)

ds35@illinois.edu
Raman Singh (TA)

ramans2@illinois.edu
Space Systems; Astrodynamics & EDL; Optimization & Optimal Control
Selva Subramaniam (TA)

ss170@illinois.edu
Yixuan Wang (TA)

yixuan22@illinois.edu
Robotics; Computer Vision
Xiangyuan Zhang (TA)
CSL 360
xz7@illinois.edu
Optimal & Robust Control Theory, Optimization, Machine Learning, Robotics

Other Important People

Name Office Phone Email Area
Scott McDonald 1049 ECE Building   samcdona@illinois.edu Machine Shop
Mark Smart 1041 ECE Building   mwsmart@illinois.edu Electronics Services Shop
Casey Smith 3064 ECE Building   cjsmith0@illinois.edu Instructional Lab Coordinator
Waltham Smith 1041 ECE Building   wlsmith@illinois.edu Electronic Services Shop
Skot Wiedmann 1041 ECE Building   swiedma2@illinois.edu Electronic Services Shop

Recovery-Monitoring Knee Brace

Dong Hyun Lee, Jong Yoon Lee, Dennis Ryu

Featured Project

Problem:

Thanks to modern technology, it is easy to encounter a wide variety of wearable fitness devices such as Fitbit and Apple Watch in the market. Such devices are designed for average consumers who wish to track their lifestyle by counting steps or measuring heartbeats. However, it is rare to find a product for the actual patients who require both the real-time monitoring of a wearable device and the hard protection of a brace.

Personally, one of our teammates ruptured his front knee ACL and received reconstruction surgery a few years ago. After ACL surgery, it is common to wear a knee brace for about two to three months for protection from outside impacts, fast recovery, and restriction of movement. For a patient who is situated in rehabilitation after surgery, knee protection is an imperative recovery stage, but is often overlooked. One cannot deny that such a brace is also cumbersome to put on in the first place.

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Solution:

Our group aims to make a wearable device for people who require a knee brace by adding a health monitoring system onto an existing knee brace. The fundamental purpose is to protect the knee, but by adding a monitoring system we want to provide data and a platform for both doctor and patients so they can easily check the current status/progress of the injury.

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Audience:

1) Average person with leg problems

2) Athletes with leg injuries

3) Elderly people with discomforts

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Equipment:

Temperature sensors : perhaps in the form of electrodes, they will be used to measure the temperature of the swelling of the knee, which will indicate if recovery is going smoothly.

Pressure sensors : they will be calibrated such that a certain threshold of force must be applied by the brace to the leg. A snug fit is required for the brace to fulfill its job.

EMG circuit : we plan on constructing an EMG circuit based on op-amps, resistors, and capacitors. This will be the circuit that is intended for doctors, as it will detect muscle movement.

Development board: our main board will transmit the data from each of the sensors to a mobile interface via. Bluetooth. The user will be notified when the pressure sensors are not tight enough. For our purposes, the battery on the development will suffice, and we will not need additional dry cells.

The data will be transmitted to a mobile system, where it would also remind the user to wear the brace if taken off. To make sure the brace has a secure enough fit, pressure sensors will be calibrated to determine accordingly. We want to emphasize the hardware circuits that will be supplemented onto the leg brace.

We want to emphasize on the hardware circuit portion this brace contains. We have tested the temperature and pressure resistors on a breadboard by soldering them to resistors, and confirmed they work as intended by checking with a multimeter.

Project Videos