Engineering Commons^™

The Automated Wheelchair, Jonathan Doksa Kamba Ngoyi

Honors College Theses

Automation refers to the use of technology to execute tasks through programmed instructions and automated control mechanisms to ensure accurate execution. This minimizes human involvement and encompasses various fields, including business process automation. A notable form of automation is assistive technology, which refers to any device or software that enhances individuals' learning, communication, or overall functionality. This can range from advanced tools like computers to simpler aids like walking sticks. Assistive technology aims to promote inclusivity and participation, particularly among individuals with disabilities, the elderly, and those with non-communicable diseases.

The Automated Airport Wheelchair is a culmination of prior projects …

Sensor Updates For Bigheaded Carp-Tracking Autonomous Boat, Jordan Kaufmann

Honors College Theses

Bigheaded carp are an invasive species that overpopulate and compete with the native species of Kentucky Lake as well as many other North American aquatic ecosystems. The movement patterns of Bigheaded carp are being studied nationwide by the United States Geological Survey and multiple universities. These studies ultimately seek to control their spread and reduce or reverse the ecosystem destabilization caused by this invasive species. Such studies are currently conducted manually on Kentucky Lake by graduate students affiliated with the Murray State University (MSU) Biology Department and Hancock Biological Station, and these manual studies are an arduous and time-consuming effort. …

Designing The Power System Of A Robot, Nolan Hays

Honors College Theses

This thesis outlines the acquired skills and knowledge acquired through the course of four years of Murray State University’s School of Engineering. The capstone for students in the department was to team up and complete an interdisciplinary senior design project using skills from various tracks of engineering. For this thesis, there is a greater emphasis on the electrical engineering track. The objective of the project was to build an autonomous robot to complete the various tasks within the scope of the IEEE SoutheastCon 2023 Hardware Competition. The robot was controlled via a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. There were three …

Optical Sensing Of Capillary Waves, Matthew Franklin Reid

Honors College Theses

I relay various topics I learned about this semester and summarize the specialties of Clemson’s Micro-Photonics Laboratory. I report pertinent information for characterizing capillary waves with lasers and one recent method of characterizing them. Lastly, I outline a potential plan for mathematically modeling a laser’s reflection off of capillary waves, and potential plans moving forward.

Microwave Characterization Of Polymeric Microparticle Morphology, Gabriel D. Cutter

Honors College Theses

Biological cell function and overall health are highly defined by the cell’s morphology. Sorting cells based on their shape is recently a major interest to the biomedical field for the future of medical treatments and health diagnostics. This work presents a new shape-based particle sorting technique using a novel microwave sensing system as a step toward biological cell sorting. The new sensing system consists of a grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) transmission line that simultaneously serves as a single-particle microfluidic channel and a microwave sensor, which is paired with a microwave interferometer to boost signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Polystyrene microspheres, a common …

Implementation Of Static Rfid Landmarks In Slam For Planogram Compliance, Brennan L. Drake

Honors College Theses

Autonomous robotic systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life and exhibit robust solutions in a wide range of applications. They face many obstacles with the foremost of which being SLAM, or Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, that encompasses both creation of the map of an unknown environment and localization of the robot in said environment. In this experiment, researchers propose the use of RFID tags in a semi-dynamic commercial environment to provide concrete landmarks for localization and mapping in pursuit of increased locational certainty. With this obtained, the ultimate goal of the research is to construct a robotics platform for …

Development And Optimization Of Classification Neural Networks For Disaster-Assessment Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems, Maria Isabel Gonzalez Bocanegra

Honors College Theses

This research focuses on increasing the classification accuracy of convolutional neural networks in an autonomous network of unmanned aerial vehicles for transportation disaster management. The autonomous network of UAVs will allow first responders to optimize their rescue plans by providing relevant information on inaccessible roads. The research seeks to explore different methods to optimize the architecture of convolutional networks for the multiclass classification of disaster-damaged roads.

Autonomous Control And Signal Acquisition System, Rion Cadell Krampe

Honors College Theses

Our goal is to continue a previous teams project to build a NDE autonomous control and signal acquisition system that is more precise, more customizable with both code and mechanical parts, and cheaper than a similar system bought by the school. This goal has two stages to it. First, to repair the system from considerable damage it received during transportation. Secondly, to continue designing and developing the system to make considerable progress towards the goal of a fully functional NDE system. Along with making progress we must consider the team after us and create an easy stepping off point for …

Automated Bottling Station - Packaging System, Lauren Nicole Zinzilieta

Honors College Theses

This report focuses on the packaging system used at the end of the FESTO bottling station that is located in EP 2355. The system will be made up of an x-y 300 mm x 300 mm gantry system, an Arduino, two micro-stepping stepper drivers, and two 152.4 mm (6 in) single acting cylinders with a 3D printed bracket attached to both. The gantry system will be located at the end of the conveyor belt and will be programmed to pick up three bottles at a time and then will move a specified number of steps in both the x and …

Pneumonia Radiograph Diagnosis Utilizing Deep Learning Network, Wesley O'Quinn

Honors College Theses

Pneumonia is a life-threatening respiratory disease caused by bacterial infection. The goal of this study is to develop an algorithm using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to detect visual signals for pneumonia in medical images and make a diagnosis. Although Pneumonia is prevalent, detection and diagnosis are challenging. The deep learning network AlexNet was utilized through transfer learning. A dataset consisting of 11,318 images was used for training, and a preliminary diagnosis accuracy of 72% was achieved.

Improved Signal Performance For Smartphones, Devin A. Ferrell

Honors College Theses

The research project “Improved Signal Performance for Smartphones” involves collecting and analyzing data from a smartphone’s available connections and making the information available in a simple application interface. Due to the data collection/analysis and iOS system framework, several ethical and professional issues will be encountered ranging from individual privacy to company standards/guidelines. These conflicts are addressed, and solutions are provided, along with researching into similar situations that others have reported. By making comparisons between this project and similar approaches, professional and ethical areas of concern can be addressed early into development, or completely avoided. The research project course was properly …

Autonomous Object Collecting And Depositing Robot, Erik Anderson

Honors College Theses

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) hosted SoutheastCon 2019, with one of the conference’s focuses being a robotics competition. The robotics competition simulates the task of removing space debris near a space station and depositing it in predetermined areas. This task must be completed by an autonomous robot that meets a variety of physical design criteria. The performance of robots is measured by means of points, wherein accomplishing positive tasks earns points and vice versa, and the robot that most consistently scores points wins.

In response to the competition, the four engineering physics majors created a robot that …

An Optimization Approach Based On The Interior-Point Methodology For The Tertiary Control Of Modernized Microgrids, Isaiah D. Woodruff

Honors College Theses

With the rise in popularity of the modernized microgrids (MMGs), the addition of a controller to maximize economic efficiency while considering environmental impact is crucial. Tertiary control is at the highest control level, considering economic concerns related to the optimal operation of the microgrid and using a sampling time from minutes to hours; tertiary controls manage the flow of power between the microgrid and the connected grid. In MMGs' tertiary controls, the use of optimization algorithms to minimize an objective function with equality and inequality constraints allows for powerful control over the system. In this paper, the interior-point algorithm is …

Employing H.264 Coarse And Medium Grain Scalable Video To Optimize Video Playback Over Passive Optical Networks, David Moore

Honors College Theses

In this work, we propose the use of Coarse Grain Scalable (CGS) and Medium Grain Scalable (MGS) H.264/AVC video to optimize video playback on passive optical networks (PONs) by investigating network performance metrics such as data delay, video delay, and video delay jitter. Video playback is improved by sequentially dropping layers of scalable video. Dropping just a single CGS enhancement layer results in improvements of up to 57% for both data and video delay. However, video delay jitter benefits the most with an improvement ranging from 47% to 87%. Surprisingly, dropping subsequent CGS enhancement layers does not significantly improve the …

Efficient Image Coding And Transmission In Deep Space Communication, Reiner Dizon

Honors College Theses

The usefulness of modern digital communication comes from ensuring the data from a source arrives to its destination quickly and correctly. To meet these demands, communication protocols employ data compression and error detection/correction to ensure compactness and accuracy of the data, especially for critical scientific data which requires the use of lossless compression. For example, in deep space communication, information received from satellites to ground stations on Earth come in huge volumes captured with high precision and resolution by space mission instruments, such as Hubble Space Telescope (HST). On-board implementation of communication protocols poses numerous constraints and demands on the …

Novel H.265 Video Traffic Prediction Models Using Artificial Neural Networks, Collin Daly

Honors College Theses

In this work, we propose the use of non-linear, autoregressive neural network models for predicting video frame sizes. This model utilizes H.265 encoded video traces as inputs and the predicted future frame sizes as outputs. This model is developed to predict ultra-high definition video frame encoded with H.265 within IP networks. The video I, P, and B frames are predicted separately to improve model prediction accuracy. This approach is verified in MATLAB using various H.265 video traces. The results indicate that the proposed models were able to predict the video traffic fairly accurately.

Machine Learning Through Mimicry And Association, Nickolas S. Holcomb

Honors College Theses

Adaptability is a key missing features that has impeded the growth of assistive robotics. In the traditional model, all actions must be explicitly coded by a skilled programmer familiar with the hardware. This project explores a method of teaching a webcam equipped arm type robot new primitive movement using visual demonstrations.

Energy Sources And The Production Of Electricity In The United States, David Manukjan

Honors College Theses

The current sources of energy that the United States uses to produce electricity are costly, extremely damaging to the environment, and cause us to rely on other countries for our energy needs. The Obama Administration has begun working on replacing coal and oil with cleaner sources of energy. Over the last decade, alternative energy sources have been slowly gaining popularity as the American public learns more about climate change. However, the U.S. government will not use renewable energy as a complete substitute for fossil fuels in the immediate future because of their higher market price. The world is struggling to …