Engineering Commons^™

Granny Pod Virtual Assistant, David Connolly, Bing Chen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Dr. Chen is working on a sustainable small house (SSH) project, sometimes called the “Granny Pod”. Regulations will soon allow homeowners to house their parents on their property, which can be an opportunity live independently in a cheap, sustainable, and convenient alternative to a retirement community. To help achieve this vision, a Virtual Assistant system for the SSH was developed. The system uses a Google Home or Amazon Echo to respond to the voice command “Hey Google (or Alexa), I need help” by contacting the nearby homeowner or caretaker. It alerts the resident who is at the door when the …

A Voice Activated Prosthetic Mode Of Control, Will Picken

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

There are many options for a prosthetic mode of control. The most commonly created modes of control involve surface EMG (sEMG) and require that the user have well defined muscle activation in order to trigger the movement of the prosthetic. Unfortunately, many prosthetic users do not have the required muscle tone or strength to trigger these sensors, so the need for a control mechanism that doesn’t rely on sEMG is clear. This study focuses on the development of a low-cost, voice activated prosthetic mode of control compatible with the prosthetics developed by Dr. Zuniga and his research team.

The printed …

Development And Testing Of 3d Printed Prostheses, Orthoses, And Assistive Devices For Children And Adults, Walker Arce

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

User controllable interfaces for exoskeletons have consisted of either switch controlled interfaces, for ‘on’ or ‘off’, or elastic powered schemes that allow the user’s wrist flexion to provide the resistance for their therapy. This project aims to develop a hands-free mode of control for the exoskeleton, that uses more advanced electronic components to achieve a more natural user interface. Our approach to this project is the prototyping of a control system that uses the MyoBand Gesture Control Armband (MyoBand), and a simple Arduino based electronic design. The three modes of operation possible for this design is measuring the electrical signals …

Quantifying Static And Dynamic Stability Using Mobile Sensors, Mason Schleu

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Balance disorders impact millions of people causing substantial impact on quality of life due to psychological and physical hardships associated with poor balance. However, a clinically relevant, low cost, self-service system in detecting such disorders does not exist. Previous research has shown the built in accelerometer and gyroscope sensors of a smart phone to be valid tools in detecting standing balance performance using traditional linear analysis, however, such a system has yet to be proven useful in detecting dynamic postural variability. Indeed, more quantitative methods than are typically used in clinical settings are necessary for early detection of poor postural …

Literature And Performance Of Music For Double Bass And Tape, Jeremy C. Baguyos

Music Faculty Publications

Electroacoustic music for double bass can be classified into the following two types of repertoire: real-time/interactive computer music or tape music. Real-time/interactive computer music is the newer of the two types and involves the algorithmic generation of electronic sounds in live performance. Pre-recorded electronic sounds are usually avoided, and instead, the sound of live input is used as the source material for electronic sounds. A computer is used for capture, processing and synthesis, and the software is usually written in the MAX/MSP environment. The second category, tape music, is the older of the two types of electroacoustic music for the …

Synchronisms For Double Bass, Jeremy C. Baguyos

Music Faculty Publications

The Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames, Iowa, recently hosted the 2007 National Conference of the Society of Electro-acoustic Music In The United States (SEAMUS) from March 8th through the 10th. The annual SEAMUS conference brings together nationally recognized composers, performers, and researchers in the field of computer music for a half-week program of concerts and paper sessions. The 2007 conference featured the premier of Synchronisms No. 11 for Contrabass and Electronic Sounds by Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934). With coordination from SEAMUS, the work was commissioned by a consortium of various academic institutions. The work was composed …

Spin-Polarized Electronic Structure, Arti Kashyap, Renat F. Sabirianov, Sitaram S, Jaswal

Physics Faculty Publications

This chapter is devoted to the electronic structure of nanoscale metallic magnets. After an introduction to methods of electronic structure calculations, we review how recent trends translate into the description of magnetic nanostructures. Among the considered structures are nanowires, small particles, surfaces and interfaces, and multilayers, and emphasis is on magnetic properties such as moment and magnetization, interatomic exchange, and anisotropy. One of the goals of computational nanoscience is to calculate physical and chemical properties from first principles. This requires the knowledge of the electronic structures of the materials system in question. The density-functional theory (DFT) makes a huge step …