Engineering Commons^™

A Low-Cost, Low-Power, Scada Testbed Solution For Secure Remote Monitoring, Connor Berger

Symposium of Student Scholars

Similar to software application systems adopted by companies and businesses for product logging, payroll, human resources, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems control the distributed processes with multiple components located on different machines that communicate and coordinate actions in order to appear as a single coherent system. SCADA systems severely lack the appropriate security and hack prevention measures. We propose a low cost, low power SCADA testbed solution for secure remote monitoring. The goal of this research is to implement and test the testbed’s security by emulating attack vectors on both hardware components and communication channels to probe the …

Small-Separation Speckle Contrast Optical Spectroscopy For Intraoperative Assessment Of Parathyroid Glands Viability During Thyroid Surgery, Connor Berger

Symposium of Student Scholars

The parathyroid glands (PTGs) are often damaged during thyroid surgeries due to a lack of methods identifying PTGs and assessing their viability. Damage to PTGs can cause hypocalcemia, a deficiency of calcium in the body. This complication can lead to detrimental consequences with economic burden. The surgeon’s current method of viability assessment is qualitative and subjective. Our technical solution is to employ an optical technique called speckle contrast optical spectroscopy (SCOS) that noninvasively quantifies the blood flow index (Db) of biological tissues at deep tissue levels (>1cm). The goal of this project is to verify SCOS at small source-detector-separation …

Raman Scattering Measurements And Analyses Of Gan Thin Films Grown On Zno Substrates By Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition, Zane Mcdaniel, Zhe Chuan Feng, Kevin Stokes

Symposium of Student Scholars

Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is a popularly used method of growing thin films of GaN on ZnO (GZ) substrates, which pair well due to their structural and characteristic similarities. In this research, optical characterization of the surface quality of GZ sample films is measured by analyzing Raman scattering (RS) using a Renishaw inVia spectrometer fitted with a 532nm laser. Samples were grown in an improved double injection block rotating disc reactor. Multiple samples' spectra show broad peaks that correspond with the E2 (high) and A1 (LO) branches of GaN, and nicely fitted curves are observed for the characteristic E2 …

Dynamic Perimeter Movement Using Uavs And Robotic Systems, Nayeli Barrett, John Lawson, Billy Kihei

Symposium of Student Scholars

For this study, we propose a Dynamic Perimeter Movement system that has a user-operated UAV to identify GPS coordinate points using land markers such as April Tags. These markers would be used to identify the perimeter of a road work zone. Once the work zone is determined, autonomous robotic traffic cones would disperse to position themselves around the perimeter determined by coordinate points. As the work zone progresses the UAV would periodically update the perimeter to reposition robotic traffic cones. These traffic cones will operate using a Pure Pursuit system as a means to navigate.

Cnt Metamaterial Fabrication 3d Printing Mask Process, Jose J. Rivero Iii

2022 MME Undergraduate Research Symposium

The demand for clean energy is rising with the global population. Renewable energy sources, such as solar, will play a key role in the years ahead. Solar energy has a key problem with energy storage as the energy produced during peak solar hours must be used immediately or stored. Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) have unique electrostatic properties, similar to metals, capable of producing and storing electric energy in the form of a capacitor. The CNTs are to be arranged in a pattern using 3D printing to generate a Split Ring

Resonator (SRR) metamaterial. Past research has shown generating CNT SRR patterns …

Project Khepri: Mining Asteroid Bennu For Water, Erika Frost, Gowtham Boyala, Adam Gremm, Ahmet Gungor, Amirhossein Taghipour, Massimo Biella, Jiawei "Jackson" Qiu, Athip Thirupathi Raj, Arjun Chhabra, Adam Gee, Saanjali Maharaj, Erin Richardson, Julia Empey, Haidar Ali Abdul-Nabi, Lindsay Richards, Ariyaan Talukder, Aaron Groh, Brie Miklaucic, Jd Carlson, Kristina Kim, Maverick Cue

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Deep space asteroid mining presents the opportunity for the collection of critical resources required to establish a cis-lunar infrastructure. In specific, the Project Khepri team has focused on the collection of water from asteroid Bennu. This water has the potential to provide a source of clean-energy propellant as well as an essential consumable for humans or agriculture on crewed trips to the Moon or Mars. This would avoid the high costs of launching from Earth - making it a highly desirable element for the future of cis-lunar infrastructure. The OSIRIS-REx mission provided a complete survey of asteroid Bennu and is …

Introduction To Pub/Sub Systems Using Opcua, Mete Isiksalan

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The purpose of the project was to learn and implement the fundamental basics of OPCUA system architecture using pub/sub systems. The system allows the users to create multiple different publishers and subscribers while accessing data from a local server and a primary HTTP server. The system is designed to be a multi-client and multi-server system to simulate real-life scenarios while having two different sources of generated values to send via sockets in OPCUA protocols, multiple different APIs were used for the clients on how they retrieve data as well.

Triple-Motor Driver For Hand Simulator, Yamaan Bakir

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

No abstract provided.

Data Preprocessing For Machine Learning Modules, Rawan El Moghrabi

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Data preprocessing is an essential step when building machine learning solutions. It significantly impacts the success of machine learning modules and the output of these algorithms. Typically, data preprocessing is made-up of data sanitization, feature engineering, normalization, and transformation. This paper outlines the data preprocessing methodology implemented for a data-driven predictive maintenance solution. The above-mentioned project entails acquiring historical electrical data from industrial assets and creating a health index indicating each asset's remaining useful life. This solution is built using machine learning algorithms and requires several data processing steps to increase the solution's accuracy and efficiency. In this project, the …

Credit Card Fraud Detection, Charles Wang

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

In recent years, credit card fraud poses a significant threat to banks and customers financially over the world. However, in the banking industry, to counter this issue, machine learning algorithms has become a growing trend to put proactive intervention of credit card fraud in place. In this project, we are going to detect fraudulent credit card transactions with machine learning models. This data set includes 284807 credit card transactions of European cardholders over a period of two days with their personal information kept anonymous. Among all transactions, 492 were fraudulent.

Interactive Planetarium Project, Eric Babcock, Cody Park, Johann Van Hilst

Discovery Day - Prescott

The Interactive Planetarium Project will design and build the software framework for connectivity between the Digistar 6 planetarium projection software and the smartphones of all audience members in the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium. The goal of this project is to make planetarium shows more participatory, add a feature to our planetarium shows that many other universities do not yet have, and create a framework for future students and faculty to build from. To demonstrate our technology, we will make a real-time competitive trivia game able to support 60 concurrent users (number of expected audience members in the planetarium).

The …

Memristors, Memcapacitors And Their Application In Neuromorphic Computing, Nithyakalyani Sampath

Student Research Symposium

Data-intensive computing operations, such as training neural networks, are essential but energy-intensive. Memcapacitance and memristance,which can be described as capacitance and resistance, with “memory”, are properties of semiconductor devices that are observed on the nano-scale. These properties allow for data storage without a constant source of power, leading to hardware which is more energy efficient.

We intend to demonstrate that we can build specialized hardware onto which a neural network can be directly mapped using memristors and memcapacitors, improving the energy efficiency of the network. We will use Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) to model our memcapacitor and …

Growing Reservoir Networks Using The Genetic Algorithm Deep Hyperneat, Nancy L. Mackenzie

Student Research Symposium

Typical Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have static architectures. The number of nodes and their organization must be chosen and tuned for each task. Choosing these values, or hyperparameters, is a bit of a guessing game, and optimizing must be repeated for each task. If the model is larger than necessary, this leads to more training time and computational cost. The goal of this project is to evolve networks that grow according to the task at hand. By gradually increasing the size and complexity of the network to the extent that the task requires, we will build networks that are more …

Autonomous Navigator Mobile Robot Upgrade, David Sansoucy

Thinking Matters Symposium

The mobile robot platform has been developed over the course of 10 years at USM. In Spring 2020, Belle-Isle and Werner updated the previous framework by rewriting the software to use the ROS framework running on an on-board Raspberry Pi 3. They also implemented navigation using an A* motion planning algorithm and image processing. In Summer 2021, Ames incorporated Lidar and Kinect sensors onto the robot to improve its real-time navigation capabilities. He also made improvements to the power distribution systems. This project aimed to build on the ROS frameworks developed by the previous 2 teams with the main goal …

A Low-Cost, Arduino-Based Platform For Emulating Energy Harvesting In Wireless Sensor Networks, Braden A. Miller

ONU Student Research Colloquium

This paper presents an Arduino-based platform for emulating energy harvesting in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as a form of hardware-in-the-loop simulation. The platform makes use of a battery monitoring circuit and code implemented on the Arduino as an alternative to using significantly more expensive fully equipped energy harvesting nodes. Using embedded code to emulate the energy harvesting process allows for various energy harvesting models and processes to be tested using the same platform. The main contributions of this paper are the experimental data and analyses demonstrating the energy use characterization of the Arduino-based platform in a three-node relay network using …

Combat Robot, Wayne Lambert, Elijah Harris, Brian Eiseman, Jordan Meyer

ONU Student Research Colloquium

The senior capstone project that was tasked to the team was the decision of choosing a challenge within a national robotics competition. The group decided to compete at the National Robotics Challenge in Marion, Ohio. The idea was to participate in the combat robot competition at this NRC event. Once this decision had been made the next steps were to get an idea of what the rules and requirements of the competition were and to try and to sketch a very rough drawing of what the ideal robot should look like. From there it was decided to start a timeline …

A Study Into The Impact Of Screen Time On Student Gpa, Mia Brown, David Santos, Akeisha Belgrave

Harrisburg University Research Symposium: Highlighting Research, Innovation, & Creativity

With advances in technology, the use of computers has become a common habit for most college students. Recent studies show that the amount of time spent on those devices can affect their grades. (Class Project)

Development Of A Compliant Gripper Driven By 3 Dof Soft Robot, Derek M. Price Ii, Ricardo Ramirez, Pt Angel Tran

Symposium of Student Scholars

Industrial robots are moving toward automation, which makes it increasingly necessary to replace the functions traditionally performed by humans with robotics. Pick and place operation is a prime example of such automation. Robots that pick up and place objects mimic the human action of picking an object up and placing it in a targeted location. It has led to the development of robotic end-effectors that have a human-like feel. Grippers can be articulated in various ways depending on their application area and well-defined desired tasks. As compliant and soft links deflect more under the same load than their rigid body …

Ai Based Optimization Of Odometry Performance On Mobile Robots, Sunny Leveson Jones, Charles Koduru

Symposium of Student Scholars

Robots have become a large part of the modern world and have been used to navigate through complex environments, with various optimal speeds and pathing requirements. To improve this, we have developed an AI-based predictive pathing optimizer that takes in data regarding the requested route and implements optimal speeds. The algorithm will compare time lost to the time gained by moving at a higher velocity. This has been developed by implementing continual circular patterns onto a mobile robot, which allows for rapid analysis of both the accuracy and the speed of the cycle. This optimization is proposed to increase the …

A Preliminary Comparative Study Of Molecular Visualization Software For Education, Ruoming Shen

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Chemistry and biology are sciences vital for understanding metabolic processes, developing disease treatments, and improving environmental conditions. With extensive knowledge of biochemistry, we can take advantage of a material’s unique chemical composition and properties in various applications. Visualization software is essential for analyzing complex chemical and biological structures and predicting their interactions with each other. This paper presents a preliminary study of three open source molecular visualization software tools - Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD), Jmol, and Mol*, and evaluates their strengths and deficiencies. This paper utilizes the March Molecule of the Month, Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF), from the Protein …

Electric Vehicles: Lowering Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Tyler Hansen

Student Research Symposium

The amount of greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere has led to rapid climate change. In order to remedy this, the amount of annual greenhouse gas emissions needs to be decreased. As of 2019, transportation accounted for 29 percent of the Nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, one important way to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S will be a switch from traditional vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel, to electric vehicles. Despite challenges of infrastructure, resources, and consumer access, a national switch to electric vehicles is possible and necessary.

A Novel Composite Hybrid Energy Storage System For Hybrid And Electric Vehicles, Marium Rasheed

Student Research Symposium

This work introduces a composite hybrid energy storage system (CHESS) architecture that combines energy-dense and capacitively-coupled power-dense battery packs in a unique configuration that requires minimal energy balancing using low-power DC-DC converters. A power-dense battery is coupled to an energy-dense battery using a relatively small supercapacitor module that naturally distributes the system current between the two packs, requiring no additional contactors or full-power processing DC-DC converters. A design procedure is developed to size the system for plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles (PHEVs and BEVs). The procedure results in designs that achieve weight reduction for a PHEV/BEV battery-energy-storage system (ESS) …

Nuclear Fusion: Powering The Future, Maxwel Head

Student Research Symposium

There has always been a concern for power generation for the world. With limited fossil fuels and the inefficiency of our current, renewable, power generation, a solution to our issue has been in the works for many years. Engineers, scientists, and civil workers are hard at work attempting to apply nuclear fusion to create massive amounts of power for the foreseeable future. Research was conducted using internet and library resources to find primary and secondary sources. For this study, interviews and news reports and case studies were reviewed to provide diverse information. To summarize what was found, engineers are hard …

Financial Literacy In America, John Cappelli

Student Research Symposium

After graduation most people do not have enough financial knowledge to be successful. This research project looks at how financial literacy courses impact students of different backgrounds. Research was conducted using online databases to evaluate primary and secondary sources including surveys and Add something specific about the sources you used. From this research I found that US high school graduates are lacking in financial education. In conclusion I think that all US highschools need to include mandatory financial education courses in order to ensure students have at least a basic understanding before having to make major decisions.

Paying The Pied Passer: Discussing The Appropriate Contract To Award Nfl Quarterbacks, Alex Gohr

Student Research Symposium

No NFL team has ever won the Super Bowl while simultaneously paying their starting quarterback more than 13% of the maximum budget allowed for player salaries. This paper explores the effects of quarterbacks on an NFL roster and the consequences of the size of their contracts have on the performance of the team as a whole entity. This research was derived from databases of NFL statics and expert opinions on the matter of player contracts. From the research conducted, it is concluded that quarterbacks must voluntarily take less money for the opportunity to continue to compete for championships or, alternatively, …

Increase Faculty Awareness Through Personal Experiences In Active Stem Teaching And Learning At A Christian University, Aram Agajanian

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Jesus Christ taught through parables, examples, teamwork, repetitions, and questions, which are the foundations of active teaching and learning. The purpose of this presentation is to increase and invoke faculty involvement in active teaching for optimal student achievement. To emulate Jesus, educators should continually implement hands-on lab experiments; peer-to-peer, project-based, and brain-based teaching methods in their classes. Mentoring students includes providing help through office hours, teaching assistants, weekly homework and exam review sessions, and study groups. Relating to students through social occasions such as meals at the cafeteria; attending the student organizations and sports events, concerts, competitions are additional creative …

Physiological Signal Analysis For Emotion Estimation Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Janet Pulgares Soriano, Karla Conn Welch Phd

Posters-at-the-Capitol

The diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children is based on human observations by a clinician. The medical evaluation assesses deficits in social communication, social interaction, and restricted, repetitive behaviors. Robotic technology can assist in quantitatively measuring the observations to be used as a future tool for autism diagnosis and intervention. The project explores this technology to produce robotic partners that can adapt to the needs of the ASD population. This way, such robots could serve as instructors or learning peers. A friendly, partner robot, specifically designed for children with ASD could be used to investigate the effect of …