Computer Engineering Commons^™

Testing Virtual Machines For Cadrc Server Hosting, Robin Verweij

Computer Science and Software Engineering

No abstract provided.

Exploring Human-Computer Interaction Through Bluetooth Low Energy Enabled Human Interface Devices, Tyler Durkin

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

No abstract provided.

Tascked: The Sanity Promoting Task Manager, Jake Tobin

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Personal task managers or various forms of to-do lists are abundant in our modern computing age. With the explosion of mobile computing technology, it is easier than ever to take notes digitally and make the data seemingly instantly available anywhere on the Internet. There is a fairly well defined core set of features in personal task managers available for public consumption, but it seems nothing that is publicly available provides feedback to the user or suggestions based on user history. Tascked is a task management solution, which records user history and solicits user feedback on progress. This allows the system …

Automated Foosball Table Year 1: Final Project Report, Juan David Gutierrez-Franco, John Inlow, Jesse Graham, Larry Huang

Mechanical Engineering

This project is a first iteration of an automated foosball table designed and created using servomotors provided by Yaskawa to create an interactive tradeshow display where guests can play against the algorithms developed in the PLC (programmable logic controller) controlling the servomotors. There will be a second iteration of the project done by a different team directly following this one. The motion components were selected with the intent to be able to surpass the reaction times and speeds of expert human players. There are a total of eight servomotors, four controlling linear actuators for translation of rods, and four controlling …

Remote/Autonomous Sentry Gun Platform, Angelo Gagliardi, Dante Gagliardi

Electrical Engineering

This senior project involves the complete system design and construction of a "Nerf" sentry gun to replace an armed guard. We aimed to develop a compact and highly mobile defense system that allows operational flexibility. The sentry gun can autonomously track and shoot at moving targets, while also allowing a user to remotely access and control the gun via computer. The mobility, hardiness, and functionality of this system allows a reliable replacement for human beings in harsh and hostile environments; ultimately sparing a life.

Parsing Of Natural Language Requirements, Jamie L. Patterson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to automate verification of the software requirements for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator with minimal manual rework. The requirements were written in plain English with only loose stylistic constraints. While full automation proved infeasible, many significant advances were made towards solving the problem, including a framework for storing requirements, a program which translates most of the natural language requirements into the framework, and a novel approach to parts of speech analysis.

Design Of A Low Power Cargo Security Device Using A Micropower Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radar, Brian M. Wihl

Master's Theses

Each year, thousands of cargo containers are broken into during shipping, costing billions of dollars in lost and damaged goods. In addition to removing its contents, intruders can also add unwanted and dangerous materials to a container, posing a threat to National Security. The possibilities of cargo container break-ins require that the containers go through check points at which they are physically searched. These searches often require the opening of the container, unloading and inspecting all cargo, and then loading the container and resealing it. This is a long and costly process.

Because of the high costs of break-ins and …

Measuring The Counter/Assumption Model's Effect On Argumentation Quality, Evan D G Ovadia

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a new platform called See the Reason, built upon a tree- structured argumentation model called the Counter/Assumption model. In the Counter/Assumption model, a topic is posted first, then under that topic, reasons for and against, and for each reason, counterarguments, and for any counterargu- ment, more counterarguments. The model enables us to systematically determine whether a claim is “tentatively true” or “tentatively false,” in an effort to motivate people to make their side’s claims tentatively true and the opposing side’s claims tentatively false, thus encouraging conflict. Research suggests that debates with more conflict are better, so this …

A Software Development Kit For Camera-Based Gesture Interaction, Devlin Cronin

Master's Theses

Human-Computer Interaction is a rapidly expanding field, in which new implementations of ideas are consistently being released. In recent years, much of the concentration in this field has been on gesture-based control, either touch-based or camera-based. Even though camera-based gesture recognition was previously seen more in science fiction than in reality, this method of interaction is rising in popularity. There are a number of devices readily available to the average consumer that are designed to support this type of input, including the popular Microsoft Kinect and Leap Motion devices.

Despite this rise in availability and popularity, development for these devices …

Artist-Driven Fracturing Of Polyhedral Surface Meshes, Tyler Casella

Master's Theses

This paper presents a robust and artist driven method for fracturing a surface polyhedral mesh via fracture maps. A fracture map is an undirected simple graph with nodes representing positions in UV-space and fracture lines along the surface of a mesh. Fracture maps allow artists to concisely and rapidly define, edit, and apply fracture patterns onto the surface of their mesh.

The method projects a fracture map onto a polyhedral surface and splits its triangles accordingly. The polyhedral mesh is then segmented based on fracture lines to produce a set of independent surfaces called fracture components, containing the visible surface …

Digital Control Board For Phased Array Antenna Beam Steering In Adaptive Communication Applications, Mayur Bansal

Master's Theses

The application of adaptive communication techniques for mobile communications has attracted considerable interest in the last decade. One example of these techniques is spatial filtering through planar antenna array beam forming.

This thesis describes the development of a digital system that adaptively controls a phased array antenna. The radiating structure of the phased antenna array is tetrahedral-shaped and contains four antenna elements on each of its three faces. The overall system comprises of a digital control board with an external computer interface, an RF control board, and the phased antenna array. The RF controls the main lobe direction on the …

Feedback Stabilization At Spear3, Daniel Kelley, Jeff Corbett

STAR Program Research Presentations

The SPEAR3 synchrotron lightsource at SLAC relies on a sophisticated radio frequency (RF) timing system to maintain current – electrons – in the storage ring. One problem SPEAR3 operators have dealt with is the thermal expansion of one of the cables supporting this RF timing system. As the cable expands and contracts with the diurnal rise and fall of the sun, the phase of the RF in the cable shifts. This shifting phase affects the timing accuracy of electron injections into the storage ring.

A common feedback control algorithm PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) has countless applications in engineering. PID feedback …

Smarter Neat Nets, Ryan Swords Dehaven

Master's Theses

This paper discusses a modification to improve usability and functionality of a ge- netic neural net algorithm called NEAT (NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topolo- gies). The modification aims to accomplish its goal by automatically changing parameters used by the algorithm with little input from a user. The advan- tage of the modification is to reduce the guesswork needed to setup a successful experiment with NEAT that produces a usable Artificial Intelligence (AI). The modified algorithm is tested against the unmodified NEAT with several different setups and the results are discussed. The algorithm shows strengths in some areas but can increase the …

High Voltage Waveform Sensor, Nathan Stump

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project was to build a system to measure the voltage waveform of a discharging railgun. Another group of students had built a railgun system to simulate micro asteroid impacts in low Earth orbit. The only instrumentation available to them was an analog voltmeter attached to the capacitor banks. During the lengthy (30 to 45 minute) charging process, an analog voltmeter was more than capable of measuring the voltage. However, during the discharging process the time elapsed was so short (approximately one millisecond) that waveform data could not be captured. In order to measure power dissipation during …

Growing Grounds Inventory Application, Courtney Schenkl

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Automatic Site Reconstruction With A Mobile Robot And Scanning Laser Proximity Sensor, Erik Nelson, Sean Willis, Nathan Lucero

Computer Engineering

Leading research in robotics, especially in the areas of computer vision, planning, and probabilistic learning, require a mobile robot platform to program. The design and construction of such a platform is a laborious task, calling upon knowledge from many branches of engineering. Additionally, hot research topics in robotics such as vision-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), advanced trajectory planning algorithms, and adaptive control for collision avoidance contain algorithms that build upon a localization and mapping architecture which is time-consuming to program in itself. To bring future senior project teams from Cal Poly's computer engineering and computer science departments closer to …

Flarebot - Analysis Of An Autonomous Robot, Sanat S. Sahasrabudhe

Computer Engineering

Autonomous robots are increasing in popularity for educational, research, and household purposes. This report analyzes the design and functionality of one such example, called FlareBot, which is designed to self-navigate and stack cans. Specifically, the robot is designed to follow a fixed path for navigation, and stack any cans it comes across. Once a maximum number of cans is stacked, the robot releases them and restarts the process. The design is achieved using three DC motors, two servo motors, one line sensor, and one infrared sensor. Designing autonomous robots is a strong test of the engineering design process, which includes …

Obd2 Pid Reader, Andrew Fong

Computer Engineering

The most current standard on automobiles for monitoring data is OBD-II. Using On board diagnostic Parameter ID (OBD PID) codes hobbyists and mechanics have the ability to monitor, chart, and obtain data on cars by communicating to the ECU. The OBD-II connector is often located under the driver’s side inside of the car. The hardware will consist of a generic Bluetooth OBD2 connector and a laptop running windows. The software will be an program exe created by visual basic. The software created in visual basic will allow the user to examine PID codes in order to record and discover new …

Channels: Easy Video Content Consumption, Alexander R. Ledwith

Computer Engineering

The idea for this project is to take a user’s digital movie and television show library, and organize the individual videos into lists that will continuously and concurrently play like cable TV channels. This means that when a list of channels is switched to, video content will automatically start playing, possibly in the middle, based on a schedule. It should serve the needs of the user by allowing the user to quickly watch any of their existing channels, easily add a new channel based on chosen criteria or manual selection, and easily add new video content. In addition, the product …

Bruno The Robotic Bear, Aaron Brauner, Ian Panzer

Computer Engineering

Creating homemade robots are becoming a popular hobby among engineers. With the dramatic reduction in costs over the past few decades, it is finally possible to build a personal automated mailbox. Microcontrollers needed to function as the brains of the robot are also becoming powerful enough that relatively complicated instructions could be programmed into the robot to handle a plethora of sensors and peripherals. In order to demonstrate how the Computer Engineering department models the synthesis of computer science and electrical engineering, the topic chosen was robotics, specifically, a stuffed bear robot.

The microcontroller chosen was the Arduino Mega 2560 …

Automatic Text Analysis Using Drupal, Herman Chai

Computer Engineering

Natural language processing (NLP) is a field of computer science that is concerned with the interpretation of human language by computers. NLP has a multitude of different applications in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, and linguistics. The Automatic Text Analysis Using Drupal project is intended to increase the availability of NLP tools that can be easily used by the general public. By integrating a front-end content management system like Drupal with different back-end NLP applications, users can receive automatic analysis of their text without knowledge of the system.

Bluelock: A Secure Bluetooth Operated Padlock, Trever Mckee

Computer Engineering

For this project a secure, battery operated, Bluetooth operated padlock was created. The project included both the hardware to integrate with a padlock and an Android application used to interface with the hardware. In order to make the padlock secure both AES encryption and challenge response authentication were used for secure message passing between the device and the Android phone. The project also included power consumption and sustainability tuning including exploring Arduino sleep states and integrating the project with a solar charging unit.

Real Time Rendering Engine, Kevin Ubay-Ubay

Computer Engineering

Entertaining and playable content in computer graphics requires real time rendering. Real time rendering essentially demands that frames need to be rendered within milliseconds in order to deliver an interactive experience for the client. Video games are an example of such a medium that needs real time rendering. Without frame rates in the realm of real time, video games cannot deliver an enjoyable experience. Behind virtually every video game is an engine. The architecture of video game engines usually comprises of sub engines that are specifically designed to handle physics, audio, user input and rendering. The purpose of this project …

Set-Top Box Simulator, Philip Tyler

Computer Engineering

This report presents a python-based Set-top box simulation program utilizing a Simulation library called SimPy (See Appendix 1) to simulate real-time operation of a Set-top Box, or DVR. A graphical user interface, designed with PyQt4, allows a user to customize many simulation parameters such as hard drive speeds, buffer sizes, length of simulation, etc. The GUI also shows the user any errors that occur during the simulation such as buffer overflows/underflows. The results of this simulator lie within 85%-95% accuracy depending on the user-input parameters. With this simulation program, a Set-top box hardware or firmware developer can interchange the scheduling …

Pictshare, Josh Beeston, Eddie Bell

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Wargps: An Android Game That Incorporates Gps Location Services, David Nussbaum

Computer Engineering

As the future of computing moves from the traditional personal computer to that of devices in the mobile realm, the mobile device becomes a more important part of our lives. Since the release of the first iPhone in 2007, mobile devices have become heavily adopted. The adoption rate at which both Android and iOS device have been adopted among users has out-paced the adoption rate of the PC revolution from the 1980s and the Internet boom from the 1990s.6 Within the smart phone market, adoption of Android smartphones is increasing six times faster than iPhone adoption.8 In the spans of …

Motion Sensing Fifa Controller, Anthony Agius, Jake Troychak

Computer Engineering

Our Project is designed to control the XBOX 360 video game FIFA Soccer by different kicking motions made by the user. This system consists of two pieces: the microcontroller attached to the XBOX 360 controller and the foot piece that is attached to the users foot in order to read all of the movements needed to control the game. Our project brings the soccer game to life by forcing the users to actually perform the different kicking motions that they want their game avatar to copy on the game. This project was designed for those who want to be more …

Human Powered Vehicle Bike Computer, Eric Yaklin, Bradley Shellnut

Computer Engineering

This project is a bike computer system built for Cal Poly’s Human Powered Vehicle Team. It was designed and built using Arduino and Android programming tools. The project consists of an Arduino Uno used to collect bike data (such as speed, temperature and GPS location) and an Android Application used to display this data in real time and save it to user profiles within the application. Although many bike computers already exist, this project was specifically designed to be used in a team racing environment rather than for individual use.

Insight - A Virtual Reality, Svyatoslav Markeyev, Brian Spence

Computer Engineering

This is a project about extending the capabilities of current consumer virtual reality systems. The goal of the project was to extend the capabilities of the Oculus Rift Headset in order to create a system which would allow a user to explore a virtual environment in an immersive way just as they would explore reality. The system created would allow a user to explore a virtual environment by walking around in a familiar immersive manner. This was accomplished using the Unreal Development Kit, a state of the art GPS system, and industry proven IMU. The user’s movements are tracked as …

Sifteo Spice, Ikenga Kenneth Ugo

Computer Engineering

Sifteo SPICE is an application built on the Sifteo platform with the purpose of aiding in the learning of basic circuits. Traditionally, circuit theory is taught to students in two different methods, lectures and laboratory exercises. Lectures focus on auditory and visual learning and are largely passive learning. Lab experiments allow students to physically interact with the circuits, and learn visually through viewing output waveforms from simulators or on measurement devices.[3] The goal of the Sifteo SPICE project is to develop a physical system for virtual, real-time SPICE simulation that mimics the laboratory experience. In Sifteo SPICE, each individual Sifteo …