Engineering Commons^™

Path Planning With Deep Neural Networks, Paul Simmerling, Brendan Sayers, Paulo Alcantara Silva

Honors Scholar Theses

This report will cover the work and plans of the ECE 2107 Senior design team. The goal of the project is to design and build a fully autonomous self-driving car. This car will have a complete sensor suite including LIDAR, an IMU, a camera, and encoders. It will be based on a multi-level system where the highest level uses a neural network for advanced signal processing and analysis. The current state of the project is discussed as well as the final results. Project management and other constraints will be briefly investigated. This team is building a self driving car testbed …

Design Of A Robotic Inspection Platform For Structural Health Monitoring, Jason R. Soto

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Actively monitoring infrastructure is key to detecting and correcting problems before they become costly. The vast scale of modern infrastructure poses a challenge to monitoring due to insufficient personnel. Certain structures, such as refineries, pose additional challenges and can be expensive, time-consuming, and hazardous to inspect.

This thesis outlines the development of an autonomous robot for structural-health-monitoring. The robot is capable of operating autonomously in level indoor environments and can be controlled manually to traverse difficult terrain. Both visual and lidar SLAM, along with a procedural-mapping technique, allow the robot to capture colored-point-clouds.

The robot is successfully able to automate …

Chapman Ambassador Tour Robot, Alexandra Lewandowski, Yanni Parissis, Khiry Carter, Hilary Lee

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Being a student ambassador improves a student's confidence and leadership skills. With an increasing demand for technology skills, our project will display how the ambassador robot can assist student ambassadors while improving upon their efficiency, by discussing information during college campus tours and familiarizing students with robot applications and their technology. The ambassador robot can support students during tours by answering a question about specific knowledge that may have slipped an ambassador's mind. The robot will also be able to create a group-focused atmosphere that will allow ambassadors to have the opportunity to lean on a dependable teammate for specific …

Studying The Effects Of Serpentine Soil On Adapted And Non-Adapted Species Using Arduino Technology, Kiana Saniee, Edward Himelblau, Brian Paavo

STAR Program Research Presentations

Abstract: Serpentine soils are formed from ultramafic rocks and are represent an extreme environment for plants. Serpentine soils are unique in that they carry high concentrations of heavy metals, are nutrient deficient, particularly in calcium, and have poor water retention capabilities. Although these soils constitute harsh conditions for plant growth, there are a number of species that are adapted and even endemic to serpentine soil. Water retention by commercial potting mix was compared with serpentine soil. Also, serpentine adapted and non-adapted species were grown in both soil treatments and physiological data were collected. We used the Arduino electronic platform to …

“My Logic Is Undeniable”: Replicating The Brain For Ideal Artificial Intelligence, Samuel C. Adams

Senior Honors Theses

Alan Turing asked if machines can think, but intelligence is more than logic and reason. I ask if a machine can feel pain or joy, have visions and dreams, or paint a masterpiece. The human brain sets the bar high, and despite our progress, artificial intelligence has a long way to go. Studying neurology from a software engineer’s perspective reveals numerous uncanny similarities between the functionality of the brain and that of a computer. If the brain is a biological computer, then it is the embodiment of artificial intelligence beyond anything we have yet achieved, and its architecture is advanced …

A Computer Vision Application To Accurately Estimate Object Distance, Kayton B. Parekh

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Scientists have been working to create robots that perform manual work for years. However, creating machines that can navigate themselves and respond to their environment has proven to be difficult. One integral task to such research is to estimate the position of objects in the robot's visual field.

In this project we examine an implementation of computer vision depth perception. Our application uses color-based object tracking combined with model-based pose estimation to estimate the depth of specific objects in the view of our Pioneer 2 and Power Wheels robots. We use the Camshift algorithm for color-based object tracking, which uses …