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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy Of 3d Orientation And Anisotropic Wobble Using A Polarized Vortex Point Spread Function, Tianben Ding, Matthew D. Lew
Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy Of 3d Orientation And Anisotropic Wobble Using A Polarized Vortex Point Spread Function, Tianben Ding, Matthew D. Lew
Electrical & Systems Engineering Publications and Presentations
Within condensed matter, single fluorophores are sensitive probes of their chemical environments, but it is difficult to use their limited photon budget to image precisely their positions, 3D orientations, and rotational diffusion simultaneously. We demonstrate the polarized vortex point spread function (PSF) for measuring these parameters, including characterizing the anisotropy of a molecule’s wobble, simultaneously from a single image. Even when imaging dim emitters (∼500 photons detected), the polarized vortex PSF can obtain 12 nm localization precision, 4°–8° orientation precision, and 26° wobble precision. We use the vortex PSF to measure the emission anisotropy of fluorescent beads, the wobble dynamics …
Mems 411: Bearing Plate Loader, Daniel Firescu, Treeton Allison, Bethany Starr
Mems 411: Bearing Plate Loader, Daniel Firescu, Treeton Allison, Bethany Starr
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Create a Bearing Plate Loader to move a plate from one location to another.
Mems 411: Soccer Robot, Sam Ginsberg, Ella Johnson, Aaron Ocken, Andrew Bergantz
Mems 411: Soccer Robot, Sam Ginsberg, Ella Johnson, Aaron Ocken, Andrew Bergantz
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This design project was altered from the 2018 ASME Soccer Robot competition. Dr. Jackson Potter led a competition where groups built remote control robots to compete against each other in 1v1 matches based on a modified rule set from the initial 2018 competition.
Mems 411: P.O.T.T.E.R. Test Frame, Marie Drevets, Kiersten Horton, Tony Sancho
Mems 411: P.O.T.T.E.R. Test Frame, Marie Drevets, Kiersten Horton, Tony Sancho
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Our senior mechanical engineering design is a flexure test frame. At our university, third-year mechanical engineering students take a class called machine elements, in which the final project is a structural design competition. The students design a strong but lightweight object. The P.O.T.T.E.R. device can be used to judge the structural integrity of students contest entries. The customer who commissioned this project is Dr. Potter, who teaches the machine elements class. The customer needs a portable test frame which can apply enough compressive force to fracture an object which is secured in the device. The test frame should also measure …
Mems 411: Soccer Robot Project, Evan Sucherman, Dylan Mitchell, Benjamin Hessman, Emre Koc
Mems 411: Soccer Robot Project, Evan Sucherman, Dylan Mitchell, Benjamin Hessman, Emre Koc
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This project aims at designing a robot that is capable of playing a simplified form of soccer against other robots. The original competition was created by the ASME organization as a student design competition in 2018. This project is an adapted version in which some of the rules and guidelines have been changed to fit the goals of this class better. The design parameters for this project include: having the robot drive around the parameter of the playing field in under 17 seconds, having the vehicle successfully capture the ball within 2 seconds of approaching 8 out of times, and …
Mems 411: Giant Pouched Rat Trap, Ronald Fields, Mariano Gonzalez, Edward Li, Jordan Hu
Mems 411: Giant Pouched Rat Trap, Ronald Fields, Mariano Gonzalez, Edward Li, Jordan Hu
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Dr. Braude from the Biology department at Washington University in St. Louis is currently working on a project training giant Gambian pouched rats to find mines and other bombs in former conflict zones. In order to trap Gambian pouched rats, Professor Braude asked a few MEMS 411 Senior Design groups to design and build a trap that can safely capture the rats. The trap had to be about 2-3 feet long, 6 inches in diameter, completely mechanical, simple, and it had to cost less than 30 USD to build.
Mems 411: Soccer Robot, Luis Castro, Lydia Kang, Moshe Eskenazi, Ryan Whelan
Mems 411: Soccer Robot, Luis Castro, Lydia Kang, Moshe Eskenazi, Ryan Whelan
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) hosts annual competitions for engineeringstudents across the world. The ASME 2018 Student Design Competition wasto build a robotic soccerteam to compete in a FIFA World Cup style elimination tournament. Robot(s) must fit inside a 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 meter cube,be powered by batteries, and be controlled by a human operator with a wireless radio transmitter or through an electrical “umbilical” cord. The balls are tennis balls.
Mems 411: Q.T. B-Bar, Gambian Pouched Rat Trap, Benjamin W. Horine Jr., Ileane Ho, Sarangi Pathirana
Mems 411: Q.T. B-Bar, Gambian Pouched Rat Trap, Benjamin W. Horine Jr., Ileane Ho, Sarangi Pathirana
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
To design and build an improved rat trap that will effectively capture a Gambian Pouched Rat of larger size ensuring the rodents' safety, easy deployment in natural environments, simple mechanical release mechanisms, and cost-effectiveness.
Mems 411: Lost Grains Thresher, Alicia Gupte, Sophie Fox, Dan Heikes, Andrew Waldherr
Mems 411: Lost Grains Thresher, Alicia Gupte, Sophie Fox, Dan Heikes, Andrew Waldherr
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Lost Grains Thresher project aims to design and implement a device that can successfully separate the seed and chaff from various grains that are native to the greater St. Louis area. This project is designed for Dr. Natalie Mueller at Washington University in St. Louis to replace her current method of separating plant seeds from chaff by hand. This project focused on three main performance goals: 1) the device should work on a minimum of two types of seeds and thresh them to an acceptable quality, 2) the device should be easily cleaned and reset within three minutes, and …
Mems 411: Friction Frenzy, Angelo Hawa, Landon Tafoya, Noah Owens
Mems 411: Friction Frenzy, Angelo Hawa, Landon Tafoya, Noah Owens
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The demo is designed to demonstrate the concept of friction to younger children(ages 4+) using an incline plane. The premise is to allow the user to slowly elevate a surface until a block resting on top begins to slide, at which point an electronic interface displays the calculated amount (or coefficient) of friction. The core functions of the device are discussed based on the customer needs in order to identify key performance goals for its successful operation. The design process is documented from initial modeling to the final prototype and critical metrics including safety and ease of fabrication are discussed. …
Mems 411: Volleyball Setter, Alexander Zuga, Liam Cadden, Neil Cumberland, Jacob Ridderhoff
Mems 411: Volleyball Setter, Alexander Zuga, Liam Cadden, Neil Cumberland, Jacob Ridderhoff
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Our volleyball setting machine is intended for use by the WashU men’s club volleyball team to improve their training. It allows their skilled hitters to get more reps in practice because there currently aren’t enough skilled setters on their team.
Mems 411: The Bueffer 3000, Ty W. Bedillion, Krista Sudar, Anna Oneto, Cole Kocjancic
Mems 411: The Bueffer 3000, Ty W. Bedillion, Krista Sudar, Anna Oneto, Cole Kocjancic
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
We were tasked with creating a quality product for a customer for MEMS 411 Senior Design. Our customer was the Washington University in St. Louis Men's Club Volleyball team and they asked us to create a volleyball setting machine.
Mems 411: Giant Pouched Rat Trap, Shannon Wang, Isha Shah, Vaishali Shah, Elizabeh Saliba
Mems 411: Giant Pouched Rat Trap, Shannon Wang, Isha Shah, Vaishali Shah, Elizabeh Saliba
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
Our goal is to design a giant pouched rat trap that meets the customer needs from professor Stan Braude. The giant pouched rats are to be breed and trained to find land mines. Therefore, the rats must be captured in good condition. However, giant pouched rats are not passive once caught and tries to escape every way possible. In the past, with traditional trap wires, they tend to get caught in the wire and hurt themselves. Our solution offers a completely smooth inner wall of the trap to prevent damage to the rats, while improving on the functionality of the …
Mems 411: The Hash Setting Slasher, Garrett Barber, William Koopman, Andrew Werner, Alexandra Carr
Mems 411: The Hash Setting Slasher, Garrett Barber, William Koopman, Andrew Werner, Alexandra Carr
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The volleyball setter has certain patents that utilize some sort of rotational component or is a stationary platform that the ball rests on before the player hits it. Our design is different because it utilizes the mechanical properties of springs to propel the ball forwards. We had certain specifications to meet to allow the volleyball to be natural in its trajectory and able to be shot efficiently and effectively. Some specifications required positioning adjustments and some defined how the ball should be propelled through the air. We also had parameters involving cost, weight, and the repeatability of the mechanism to …
Mems 411: African Pouched Rat Trap, Kelechi Achilefu, Paul Joseph, David Allen, Chase Green
Mems 411: African Pouched Rat Trap, Kelechi Achilefu, Paul Joseph, David Allen, Chase Green
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
What is often thought of as a rat trap is often in reality a mouse trap, or a trap designed to catch small rodents. Rats can be quite large and catching them without harming them can be quite difficult. Current market solutions generally either kill or harm the rodent which is not acceptable for our client's needs. While there are some solutions on the market, they fall short of the needs of our client which is more specialized due to the size of rodent they will be capturing, the circumstances surrounding the capture, the number of rodents our client needs …
Mems 411: Laundry No Mo (Lnm), Justin Tai, Minju Lee, Logan Johnson, Elijah Stewart
Mems 411: Laundry No Mo (Lnm), Justin Tai, Minju Lee, Logan Johnson, Elijah Stewart
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
How can you optimize your time and labor while folding laundry? You can do so with this laundry folding device called Laundry No Mo (LNM).
Mems 411: Asme Soccer Robot, Braden Arango, Brendan Otani, Florie Markwell
Mems 411: Asme Soccer Robot, Braden Arango, Brendan Otani, Florie Markwell
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This project was based off of a variation of the ASME Soccer Robot Competition, where 5 teams were tasked with creating a soccer robot to compete with. The main objective for each team was to create a remote-controlled robot with an integrated shooting mechanism that was capable of shooting a tennis ball, with accuracy, into a goal. A design process was used to create this robot from scratch, where multiple concepts were created and tested through mock-ups and prototypes to better understand the problem at hand. Throughout this process, three main prototype goals were prioritized: the ability to drive around …
Mems 411: The Water Bike, Erin Flynn, Patrick Grindel, Nicholas Payne, Ryan Allin
Mems 411: The Water Bike, Erin Flynn, Patrick Grindel, Nicholas Payne, Ryan Allin
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
This design project explored the concept of a bike that can float on water and be used to assist lifeguards in rescues. The goal was for it to be quickly converted from a road to water configuration and be quick and stable enough to be a useful tool in saving drowning swimmers.
Mems 411: Mini Test Frame, Howard Wu, Max Richter, Baker Blevins, Andrew Issac
Mems 411: Mini Test Frame, Howard Wu, Max Richter, Baker Blevins, Andrew Issac
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
A lightweight, cheap, and portable compression test frame designed for testing students' structural designs for the Machine Elements class. Measures load and displacement applied on the specimen to determine the specimen with the highest strength.
Volleyball Crossbow- Group W, Giovanni Alvarez, Kyle Krippner, Alexis Rivera
Volleyball Crossbow- Group W, Giovanni Alvarez, Kyle Krippner, Alexis Rivera
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Volleyball Crossbow was our solution to the problem of a limited number of skilled setters on a volleyball team. This device will alleviate expectations of the setters and improve the efficiency of practice drills. The major customer needs for this device included consistency in launch, height and angle adjustability, high speed of operation, and ease of use. The Volleyball Crossbow provides a relatively low-cost, easy to manufacture design that meets these customer needs. As the name suggests, the design inspiration came from the crossbow mechanism. Two elastic bands attached to a cross-member and a cart on a track are …
Mems 411: Free Kick Robot, Rahi Miraftab-Salo, Will Goldberg, Wlodie Rebesque
Mems 411: Free Kick Robot, Rahi Miraftab-Salo, Will Goldberg, Wlodie Rebesque
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The free kick robot was designed to help train the club soccer goalkeeper: Brady Shaeffer, to save shots on goal. After a customer interview with the our client, we aimed our design to shoot accurate and powerful shots in quick succession. In addition the robot was to be easily transportable. Initially, after looking at some patents, the most commercially used soccer training robots involved two parallel disks spinning and shooting out soccer balls. As a result an initial prototype was built with this idea. However, during our concept selection, we realized that the cost of building our machine was out …
Mems 411: Rowing Force Plate, Mae Hubel, Taylor Southwick, Miles Petersen
Mems 411: Rowing Force Plate, Mae Hubel, Taylor Southwick, Miles Petersen
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
The Rowing Force Plate is a device that is designed to measure a rower’s force
over time so that they can understand how hard they are rowing. Most rowing
aids communicate the speed at which someone is rowing, which is variant on water
speed, wind speed, and other inconsistent environmental and situational factors.
Force, however, can be consistently measured and is a better indicator of effort a
rower is exerting. Other products that measure force do exist, but use complex and
expensive technology, unlike our design.
After brainstorming and analyzing multiple possible designs, we concluded to use
four force sensors …
Mems 411: Safely Capturing Giant African Pouch Rats, Anthony Brown, John Christensen, Jared Harrison
Mems 411: Safely Capturing Giant African Pouch Rats, Anthony Brown, John Christensen, Jared Harrison
Mechanical Engineering Design Project Class
We were tasked with designing a trap to safely capture Giant African Pouch Rats. The traps are used in both urban and rural environments that include city streets, basements, farms, river beds, and bushes among other locations. Pouch rats are much larger than most rats and are a very ferocious species; they will harm themselves if there are any non-smooth surfaces when captured. It is very important that we designed a trap with this safety top of mind.
Jme 4110: Portable Car Wash, Coleman Kaufman, Sara Wilson
Jme 4110: Portable Car Wash, Coleman Kaufman, Sara Wilson
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
We met with our target customer to understand their needs for the ideal portable car wash. Their key needs included use by any sized passenger vehicle, washing the car as good as a community car wash, and must be portable. We started by researching current products that could match these needs, and then we sketched four of our own designs to match our customer’s needs. With these design sketches we used a metrics tool to determine which design was the best. From there we did engineering calculations to analyze the trouble spots in our design, such as the water pressure …
Jme 4110: Drag Line Wind Energy Generator, David Gengenbacher, Mouhamadou Bamba Kane, Brian Bakula
Jme 4110: Drag Line Wind Energy Generator, David Gengenbacher, Mouhamadou Bamba Kane, Brian Bakula
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
The goal of this project was to develop a prototype capable of power a 10 watt light bulb using only the energy from wind.
Jme 4110: Water Reservoir Energy Storage, Kristen Grace, Supapan Thammanok, Leticia Zoratto Lunge
Jme 4110: Water Reservoir Energy Storage, Kristen Grace, Supapan Thammanok, Leticia Zoratto Lunge
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
The goal of this project was to create a demonstrative model of a Pumped Hydroelectric Storage System (PHS). A PHS stores energy by draining water from an upper reservoir through a turbine to generate electricity. This water is then pumped from a lower reservoir to the original upper reservoir to restart the system cycle. Using existing PHS applications, a small-scale prototype was built using an aquarium pump and mini turbine, along with PVC and plastic containers. When water is run through the system, a multimeter can be used to show the power output of the system. In addition to functionality, …
Jme 4110: Data Cooling Center, Christopher Schmidt, Brennan Fogarty, Suruchi Aryal
Jme 4110: Data Cooling Center, Christopher Schmidt, Brennan Fogarty, Suruchi Aryal
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
The group will design a way to efficiently move heat within a framework of using dielectric fluid as a heat transfer medium. The heat will be removed from a data center or a simulated data center. The group will evaluate the best possible design with the understanding that cooling data centers generate a large amount of heat. The design will also be constructed in such a manner that it can be scaled up to a larger size. Dielectric fluid will be used due to its efficiency compared to that of an air cooled system or a compressed refrigerant system. Account …
Jme 4110: Vibratory Parts Feeder, Adin Stambolic, Patrick Edward Vastola, Noah Herrin
Jme 4110: Vibratory Parts Feeder, Adin Stambolic, Patrick Edward Vastola, Noah Herrin
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
Design an inexpensive, modular and tunable vibratory feeder to move different size particles from one place to another. The feeder can change according to the shape and size of the particles while in use.
Jme 4110: Lego-Lock Block, Diana Engelhardt, Dmitriy Kornyukhov, Chelsea Borders
Jme 4110: Lego-Lock Block, Diana Engelhardt, Dmitriy Kornyukhov, Chelsea Borders
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
Design a building block device that assembles similarly to a LEGO brick, but also has the capability to lock an assembly state between two bricks. Scale (size) not critical for this proof of concept (standard LEGO blocks may be too small for this first attempt).
Jme 4110: Mass Production Of Multi-Sphere Approximated Parts, Christopher Hartley, Chad Gorski, Matthew Brady
Jme 4110: Mass Production Of Multi-Sphere Approximated Parts, Christopher Hartley, Chad Gorski, Matthew Brady
Washington University / UMSL Mechanical Engineering Design Project JME 4110
For this project, the team needs to design a mass production manufacturing process. The product of the process will be parts that represent, as closely as possible, approximations of parts developed using Discrete Element Modelling (DEM) software. Since the software uses spheres to efficiently model complex parts, the manufacturing process must also utilize spheres as the building blocks for the approximated parts. As a proof of concept, this project uses river pebbles as the parts being approximated by the software and modeled by the multi-sphere production process.