Project

#	Title	Team Members	TA	Documents	Sponsor
16	TRAFFIC CONTROL SMART SYSTEM	Maria Pilar Galainena Marin Mohit Rawat William Wang	Dongwei Shi	design_document1.pdf final_paper1.pdf presentation1.pdf proposal1.pdf
	At busy intersections you often see traffic controllers directing traffic using hand and arm gestures while holding large wands that are lit up. The issue with this is that the gestures can often be unclear (especially since traffic control gestures are not even taught in driving school) and this causes confusion at the intersection which poses a threat to both the traffic controller and other drivers. On top of this, the wands can be very heavy and tend to fatigue the controller after hours of constant use. Our solution is to give the traffic controllers smart gloves that are lit by LEDs to replace the cumbersome traffic wands. These smart gloves will be able to toggle the LED colors between red and green (denoting stop and go) by closing and opening the fingers. This is a lightweight alternative to traffic wands that we also believe will be easier to understand than the gestures currently being used. With these gloves the controller will not need to move nearly as much as when they use traffic wands so they are fatigued less. In addition to the gloves we will provide an LED panel that is attached to the chest and the back of the officer which will display either STOP or GO to make it very clear to the drivers the intention of the traffic controller. This feature should ensure that the driver the controller is facing knows what to do and removes any ambiguity. All the LEDs will be in the form of LED strips to ensure flexibility for the controller so that it is not a burden to wear. These strips are also easily programmable and will be controlled by microcontrollers such as the ATmega328, one on the chest and one for each hand. Each of these microcontrollers will also have wireless transceivers such as the NRF24L01 so that button presses from the gloves will be able to control the LED panel on the body. We will detect the fingers closing and opening using conductive fabric placed between each finger so that when they are all connected to close the circuit the LEDs on the glove will turn red. The chest panel will be controlled by a button on the side of the index finger so that you can easily press it with one hand where the button will toggle the panel between stop and go displays. The gloves will be powered by lithium polymer rechargeable batteries because they are more lightweight and compact as well as the fact that we do not need very high power whereas the chest will need lithium ion rechargeable batteries for higher power since there are much more LEDs. There are other gloves made specifically for traffic control on the market, but they are simply gloves with very reflective material on the outside so that they are more noticeable. This does not solve the issue we are trying to address with our solution and on top of this, there are not really any other solutions to our problem on the market.

Electronic Automatic Transmission for Bicycle

Tianqi Liu, Ruijie Qi, Xingkai Zhou

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Tianqi Liu(tliu51)

Ruijie Qi(rqi2)

Xingkai Zhou(xzhou40)

Sometimes bikers might not which gear is the optimal one to select. Bicycle changes gears by pulling or releasing a steel cable mechanically. We could potentially automate gear changing by hooking up a servo motor to the gear cable. We could calculate the optimal gear under current condition by using several sensors: two hall effect sensors, one sensing cadence from the paddle and the other one sensing the overall speed from the wheel, we could also use pressure sensors on the paddle to determine how hard the biker is paddling. With these sensors, it would be sufficient enough for use detect different terrains since the biker tend to go slower and pedal slower for uphill or go faster and pedal faster for downhill. With all these information from the sensors, we could definitely find out the optimal gear electronically. We plan to take care of the shifting of rear derailleur, if we have more time we may consider modifying the front as well.

Besides shifting automatically, we plan to add a manual mode to our project as well. With manual mode activated, the rider could override the automatic system and select the gear on its own.

We found out another group did electronic bicycle shifting in Spring 2016, but they didn't have a automatic function and didn't have the sensor set-up like ours. Commercially, both SRAM and SHIMANO have electronic shifting products, but these products integrate the servo motor inside the derailleurs, and they have a price tag over $1000. Only professionals or rich enthusiasts can have a hand on them. As our system could potentially serve as an add-on device to all bicycles with gears, it would be much cheaper.

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