Engineering Commons^™

Affordable Bioprint Head-Adapter For 3d Printers, Andrew Ceralde, Dominic Drake, Noah Engles, Mohammad Alwan, Nevada Perry

Honors Capstones

Introduction: Addressing the need for affordable and accessible bioprinting technology, the Northern Illinois University bioprinting research and design project aims to democratize the field by developing an open source bioprint head. The initiative targets the prohibitive cost of commercial bioprinters by proposing an optimal design that can be integrated with widely available 3D printers, like the Creality Ender-3. This approach seeks to enable the widespread adoption of bioprinting technology, particularly for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Methods: Leveraging SolidWorks for design, the project employs a methodology that combines a precision extrusion system with thermal and UV crosslinking capabilities. …

Detection Of Unauthorized Transmissions In A Frequency Spectrum Using A Wireless Sensor Network, Benjamin Roehrig, Joel Brinkman, Dylan Zupec, Jannette Gonzalez

Honors Capstones

A prototype for a wireless sensor network has been designed to detect and identify unauthorized wireless transmissions in a frequency spectrum. This prototype design is intended to detect unauthorized transmissions within the FM band of frequencies independently at individual nodes with Software Defined Radio receivers and transmit that information to a fusion center for aggregation using a Bluetooth Low Energy mesh network. Aggregated results will be displayed to the user through a Graphical User Interface at the fusion center.

Improving The Power Efficiency Of Woodward’S High-Power Inverter (Hpi) Using Algorithmic Part Selection., Jaron Holder, Ali Al Gazwi, John Childers, Jose Soublett

Honors Capstones

Woodward Inc. is a secondary aerospace manufacturer based in the USA that specializes in aircraft power and control systems. This senior design project was concerned with a power systems platform currently in development by Woodward, the High-Power Inverter (HPI) system. In this report, the senior design group from Northern Illinois University (NIU) demonstrated the creation of an algorithmic part selection process to choose more power-efficient electrical components, the prototyping using MATLAB Simulink, and the practical testing that showed an increase of 7% in the power efficiency of the HPI system.

Detection Of Unauthorized Transmissions In A Frequency Spectrum Using Wireless Sensor Network, Joel Brinkman, Jannette Gonzalez, Benjamin Roehrig, Dylan Zupec

Honors Capstones

A prototype for a wireless sensor network has been designed to detect and identify unauthorized wireless transmissions in a frequency spectrum. This prototype design is intended to detect unauthorized transmissions within the FM band of frequencies independently at individual nodes with Software Defined Radio receivers and transmit that information to a fusion center for aggregation using a Bluetooth mesh network. Aggregated results will be displayed to the user through a Graphical User Interface at the fusion center.

Summonable Construction Delivery Robot, Kevin M. Lewis

Honors Capstones

In many different construction industries, there is a need for tools, parts, and other necessary items to be transported quickly and efficiently over various types of terrain. Human resources have often been used to address these needs, which can become very time and cost inefficient over long periods. The design proposal here is aimed at addressing this need by developing an autonomous outdoor mobile robot based on a quadrupedal robot design. This approach differs by incorporating a wheeled and quadrupedal hybrid actuation system that provides terrain negotiation and speed at the appropriate times. The team uses Robot Operating System (ROS) …

Coulomb Blockade-Mediated Field Emission Sources Using Ultra-Nanocrystalline Diamond, Jevin Jensen

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Coulomb Blockade effects in field emission provide interesting means of achieving brighter electron sources for numerous applications, ranging from vacuum electronics to the next generation of electron beam technology. Microelectronics cleanroom methods are presented in this thesis for production of field emission sources moderated by the Coulomb Blockade. The use of common processes is an essential step toward widespread experimentation with Coulomb Blockade-mediated field emission apparatuses. The main feature to be explored is the use of nano-diamond films for their potential applicability for this desired outcome. Ultra-Nanocrystalline Diamond is used in two different ways to achieve this, both as a …

Experimental Evaluation Of Micro-Epidermal Actuators On Flexible Substrates, Courtney D. Bradley

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Does embedding actuators in a flexible substrate increase their performance in hearing aids? What are the differences in damping experienced by actuators of different diameters and at different locations? At what frequency is peak acceleration achieved and what role does the size of the actuator and embedding it in a flexible substrate play? These questions will form the basis of this thesis. This work was done to develop a small non-invasive Band-Aid-©-like hearing aid. The novelty of this device requires a detailed analysis of piezoelectric actuators. This is a continuation of past students’ work on the topic. The main parameters …

Analysis Of Localization Algorithms For Wireless Sensor Networks Using Binary Data, Alexander Joseph Hart

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The detection, localization, and tracking of environmental and physical conditions can be accomplished using wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Recent advancements in sensors, processors, and wireless communications have improved the quality and acquisition speed of data in WSNs. However, the data gathered by a WSN is inherently random due to component and environmental variations. Thus, statistical signal processing algorithms are needed to analyze the random data in a robust way. Though many algorithms for the analysis of random data are established and available, they are problem-specific and must be adapted to the application. This thesis provides an analysis of established localization …

Optimizing Battery Performance: Investigating The Long-Term Impacts Of Bidirectional Battery Management Systems On Battery Cells, Drue Nathaniel Haskins

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

With the increased use of batteries in everyday life, it is crucial to have a robust and reliable battery system that can continue to power our devices. This paper will investigate the reliability, impact on the batteries, and functionality of the bidirectional battery management system (BMS). The design uses two bidirectional switches for each cell, one in series with the cell and one in parallel with the other bidirectional switch and cell. This will allow the cell to be taken in and out of the circuit for any reason determined by the BMS. Taking the battery in and out of …

A High-Precision Electron Emission Model: Computational Methods For Nanoscale Structures, Alister J. Tencate

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The high-intensity, high-brightness and precision frontiers for charged particle beams are an increasingly important focus for study. Electron microscopy has demonstrated high quality beams from a single nanotip emitter, and cathodes of structured nanoscale arrays show promise as ultracold electron sources. Optimization of the cathode design for precision applications necessitates a detailed treatment of the interplay between the structure geometry, quantum mechanical emission mechanism, and electromagnetic interactions between the emitted electrons and the boundary interface. This dissertation details the numerical tools developed to simulate these processes efficiently with enough fidelity to be accurate even in the ultracold regime.

Conventional simulation …

Manual Material Handling Lift-Assist System For Occupational Exoskeleton, Erik Goes, Daniel Guthrie, Trevor Ward

Honors Capstones

It is no secret that lifting heavy objects is one of the premier causes of workplace injury, and the modern worker needs help to remain healthy. Workers need something they always have with them that makes their work safer as well as easier; our solution is an active lift-assist exoskeleton. The proposed exoskeleton design includes a military backpack exoskeleton frame, on which two actuators pull cables attached to end effectors that the operator will be holding. This system can adjust to conform to a wide variety of operator sizes, without restricting any of their range of motion. This leads to …

Engagement Detection Using Prosodic Cues: An Approach For Measuring Child Emotional Engagement Level In Child-Robot Interaction Scenario, Mustafa Oztoprak

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The ultimate goal of advanced child-robot interaction is to develop a high-level intelligencecommunication channel in a closed-loop configuration with the child as the focal point of the instructional scenario. This goal can be met by establishing efficient sensing mechanisms on the robot’s side, such as automatic engagement measuring, which will allow the robot to alter its behavior or even the instructional scenario’s execution.Recent researches, regarding engagement recognition systems mostly based on facial or multi-modal features.We would like to investigate this topic using prosodic cues only. We believe speech characteristics are more likely to be related to child speaker engagement level.This …

Investigation Of A Piezoelectric Pressure Sensing To Drive An Igbt Circuit, Sonali Rawat

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, piezoelectric pressure sensing element circuit has been proposed and designed to drive the IGBT. The idea behind this work is to integrate and develop the IGBT as pressure sensor. By the application of pressure on the sensing element, the output voltage can turn on the IGBT. The relationship between the force applied and generated voltage of the electromechanical model has been analyzed theoretically.The piezo material used for this work is PZT due its best-known properties. The PZT is also modeled in COMSOL, and its output voltage results are compared with the LT SPICE and theoretical calculation for …

Comparison Of Three Phase Resonant Converter Topologies, Mohammed Adnan Shareef

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for power converters with small size, light weight, high conversion efficiency and higher power density. Also, in many applications, there is a need for DC-to-DC converters to accept DC input voltage and provide regulated and/or isolated DC output voltage at a desired voltage level including telecommunications equipment, process control systems, electric vehicles (EVs), renewable energy applications and in industry applications. At higher power levels (e.g., greater than 1kW), three-phase resonant converters have significant advantages over single-phase ones due to reduced component stresses, smaller filter size requirements, and higher power density. The LLC converter is deemed …

Risk-Aware Path Planning For Autonomous Vehicles, Shaghayegh Gaeini

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Autonomous vehicles have been the subject of intense research leading to great improvements in safety, comfort, accessibility, efficiency, etc. Path planning which provides the autonomous vehicle with a smooth, collision-free, and safe path towards its destination, is a crucial part of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Various path planning techniques have been developed in the past decades that can successfully plan a smooth and safe path in various driving scenarios. Nevertheless, these algorithms perform poorly in critical situations where the vehicle needs to quickly make a decision. To address this issue, a couple of algorithms have been proposed to replace the AV’s …

A Machine Learning Approach To Intended Motion Prediction For Upper Extremity Exoskeletons, Justin Berdell

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

A fully solid-state, software-defined, one-handed, handle-type control device built around a machine-learning (ML) model that provides intuitive and simultaneous control in position and orientation each in a full three degrees-of-freedom (DOF) is proposed in this paper. The device, referred to as the “Smart Handle”, and it is compact, lightweight, and only reliant on low-cost and readily available sensors and materials for construction. Mobility chairs for persons with motor difficulties could make use of a control device that can learn to recognize arbitrary inputs as control commands. Upper-extremity exoskeletons used in occupational settings and rehabilitation require a natural control device like …

Object Detection And Tracking With Occlusion Handling In Autonomous Vehicles, Bhuvan Tiruttani Reddy

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Object detection and tracking are important modules that need to be mastered for safe autonomous driving. Various detection and tracking algorithms have been developed in the past decade to detect and track objects accurately and efficiently in a variety of scenarios. However, most of them perform poorly during occlusion and are unable to reassociate the object IDs after the event of occlusion. In this thesis, a single unified algorithm is developed to detect, track, and display the trajectories of multiple objects in real-time, in the perceptive surroundings of an autonomous car. An Enhanced DeepSORT (EDS) tracker is proposed to better …

Investigation Of Spontaneously Patterned Nanoporous Organosilicate Thin Film Channels For Liquid Chromatography Applications., Ashwin Sanjay Bhaskaran

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Microscale devices are attractive options for the advancement of biomedical engineering and life science. They have huge potential in the pharmaceutical and biomedical fields provided the critical factors such as device size, product purity and efficiency are not a hindrance. In most cases, traditional microelectronics fabrication processes are quite costly and complicated. By improving on them, their application in fields such as chemical sensing, detection and analysis is possible. By implementing this on a chip, we can reduce the cost and improve portability. This thesis focuses on the investigation of a novel class of spontaneously patterned nanoporous organosilicate nanoparticle-based films …

A Dynamic Active Noise Control System For Live Music Attenuation, Elliot James Krueger

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis proposes a system design that will be suitable for applying active noise control (ANC) effectively to live musical instruments. The design consists of three parts: a signal separation section, an instrument classification section, and the active noise control section. The signal separation section will split up the music signals. The instrument classification section will identify the signals, and the ANC section will attenuate the music signal based on the previous information from the other sections. The two instruments of focus will be the trombone and tuba for their low frequency and ability to be quite loud in a …

Large-Scale Replication Of Anisotropic Nanostructures For Development Of Anti-Reflective Surface On Glass, Amritha Narayanan

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Improvement in the Anti-reflection coating (ARC) technology is considered as one of the most important advances made in modern lens design, for microscopes, cameras, and other optical devices. In the semiconductor industry, integrated circuit (IC) chip manufactures face increasing challenges posed by reflections from the underlying substrate during photolithography, a process used for the fabrication of IC’s. Without the introduction of ARC materials, the nanoscale circuitry that drives today’s modern electronic devices would not be possible. Despite its technological significance, real materialistic solutions with low refractive index (less than 1.3) are limited. Antireflection (AR) coatings today are most often based …

New Features For Speech Processing Standard Pronunciation Classification, Mutian Zhuang

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Pronunciation is essential in language learning. Standard English speakers could pronounce in the right way, because their pronunciation procedure is correct. The aim of this research is to see how an artificial intelligence program can be developed to provide feedback to people while they learn to generate accurate phoneme /r/. The audio signal will first be detected, after which features of audio signal will be extracted, and finally, classification will be performed. This suggested algorithm and method may be applied to other related topics. This thesis proposes new features and uses them to classify standard English speakers and non-standard English …

Hydrocarbons In The Niobrara Formation, Powder River Basin, Northeast Wyoming, From Geophysical Well Logs, Jennifer Shilo James

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The Powder River Basin, located in Wyoming, is a moderate producer of hydrocarbons with production hovering around 100 million barrels of oil per year. Recently the Niobrara Formation has garnered attention for hydrocarbon exploration and production using both conventional and unconventional drilling. A quick-look method for evaluating organic content, using either existing or real time data sets gathered from geophysical well logs, provides an opportunity to rapidly, accurately, and economically assess the formation’s organic content and thus hydrocarbon bearing potential. The popular Schmoker method determines organic content by relating gamma ray intensity to formation density. It has been successfully employed …

Developing A Machine Learning Framework For Upwind Surveyed Regions, Witenberg Santiago Rodrigues Souza

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Every year, the Oil & Gas industry loses $2B dollars due to fugitive natural gas leaks. Identifying the source of a leak is a complex challenge, especially in suburban areas where gas leakage may be mixed with other sources. Besides the multitude of possible locations for a leak in an urban area, surveying an entire city may take considerable time and funds depending on the chosen method. This work proposes a framework based on unmanned areal vehicles (UAV) to survey a region for gas leaks. To accomplish this goal, we rely on the concept of a Upwind Survey Region (USR). …

Design And Characterization Of Piezoelectric Actuator On Flexible Substrate For Conductive Hearing Aids, Sandhya Chapagain

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Conductive hearing loss (CHL) is a common condition among infants and young children. CHL caused by an obstruction/damage in the auditory canal, preventing sounds from properly transferring into the inner ear. Failure in timely treatment in the early stage of life will delay brain and physical development, affecting language acquisition, learning abilities, communication, and social skills. The available treatment for CHL is corrective surgeries and conductive hearing aids. These options are invasive and are not suitable for newborns, infants, and pediatric patients with fragile organs. Here, we designed and characterized micro-actuators on flexible substrates to generate vibrations on the surface …

Development Of Prototype Rf Front-End Electronics For Linear Accelerator Beam Position Monitoring System, Edward Matthew Siebert

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Beam Position Monitoring (BPM) systems are utilized extensively in particle accelerator facilities as a diagnostic tool to ascertain quantitative aspects of an accelerated charge-beam such as spatial position and intensity of the beam as it is accelerated to greater velocities and levels of kinetic energy within said accelerating machine. A critical aspect of a BPM system is the Radio Frequency Front End (RFFE) electronic circuitry that receives the incoming raw BPM signal and performs signal-conditioning such that its frequency spectrum is transformed from radio frequency (RF) to non-RF and digitization of the transformed signal by downstream components can successfully occur. …

Optimizing Sensor Locations To Improve The Worst Case Detection Performance Of Sensor Detection Systems, Ryan Taylor Vegrzyn

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis discusses the optimization of distributed sensor systems to maximizedetection of an emitter at an unknown location. More specifically, this thesis discusses the creation of an algorithm that seeks to optimize the spatial positions of sensors in a distributed sensor array in order to maximize the chance of detecting an emitter even if it were to occur in the worst possible location for detection. Two versions of this algorithm are discussed. The first algorithm considers a fusion rule that detects the emitter based on the sum of all sensor measurements. The second algorithm considers the scan statistic fusion rule. …

Barcode Biosensors Based On Surface Plasmon Resonance, Sneha Ramesh

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Affordable and easy to use biological assays are the current need of the day owing to the rising cost of health care within the US and worldwide. The goal of this thesis is to develop a sensitive label-free biosensing scheme exploiting surface plasmon resonance (SPR) that yields the sensor output in an easy-to-read optical bio-barcode format for high through put and multiplexed medical diagnostics. Through this research, we would like to investigate if SPR phenomena can be achieved by fabricating SP supporting metallic structures over a nanoporous dielectric layer whose optical constants are progressively varied across the substrate in a …

Implementation And Improvement Of Common Text-Independent Speaker Identification, Yunlong Wang

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to improve and implement the existing speaker recognition system. The proposed system will be cooperate with automatic speech recognition for automatically generating a script file for a recorded dialog file. Today's speech recognition technology has been widely used in many application areas; however, speaker recognition technology needs to be improved for such a purpose in noisy environment. In the process of a recorded file including multi-person conversation, manual speaker identification is often required. The proposed technique can automatically find the ID of each speaker and save manpower. It has potential applications in many other …

Optimizing Cluster Sets For The Scan Statistic Using Local Search, James Shulgan

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, scattering sensors to produce wireless sensor networks (WSN) has been proposed for detecting localized events in large areas. Because sensor measurements are noisy, the WSN needs to use statistical methods such as the scan statistic. The scan statistic groups measurements into various clusters, computes a cluster statistic for each cluster, and decides that an event has happened if any of the statistics exceeds a threshold. Previous researchers have investigated the performance of the scan statistic to detect events; however, little attention was given to the optimization of which clusters the scan statistic should use. Using the scan …

A Multi-Constraint Predictive Control System With Auxiliary Emergency Controllerfor Autonomous Vehicles, Farhad Partovi Ebrahimpour

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In the last few years, several research groups and companies have worked on developing autonomous vehicles. Among the first automation layers, the safety layer plays a significant role in this field. However, considering safety should not diminish the importance of the efficiency of the vehicle in terms of path tracking with the desired speed. This thesis introduces a multi-constraint predictive control algorithm along with a safety layer to guarantee object avoidance in emergency situations. First, there is a quick review of autonomous cars and their functionalities. In the following, a controller switching mechanism is proposed and designed. It switches the …