Engineering Commons^™

Automatic Contact Tracing Using Bluetooth Low Energy Signals And Imu Sensor Readings, Suriyadeepan Ramamoorthy, Joyce Mahon, Michael O'Mahony, Jean Francois Itangayenda, Tendai Mukande, Tlamelo Makati

Other resources

In this report, we present our solution to the challenge provided by the SFI Centre for Machine Learning (ML-Labs) in which the distance between two phones needs to be estimated. It is a modified version of the NIST Too Close For Too Long (TC4TL) Challenge, as the time aspect is excluded. We propose a feature-based approach based on Bluetooth RSSI and IMU sensory data, that outperforms the previous state of the art by a significant margin, reducing the error down to 0.071. We perform an ablation study of our model that reveals interesting insights about the relationship between the distance …

Kernel Matrix-Based Heuristic Multiple Kernel Learning, Stanton R. Price, Derek T. Anderson, Timothy C. Havens, Steven R. Price

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Kernel theory is a demonstrated tool that has made its way into nearly all areas of machine learning. However, a serious limitation of kernel methods is knowing which kernel is needed in practice. Multiple kernel learning (MKL) is an attempt to learn a new tailored kernel through the aggregation of a set of valid known kernels. There are generally three approaches to MKL: fixed rules, heuristics, and optimization. Optimization is the most popular; however, a shortcoming of most optimization approaches is that they are tightly coupled with the underlying objective function and overfitting occurs. Herein, we take a different approach …

On-Line Process Physics Tests Via Lyapunov-Based Economic Model Predictive Control And Simulation-Based Testing Of Image-Based Process Control, Henrique Oyama, A. F. Leonard, Minhazur Rahman, Govanni Gjonaj, Michael Williamson, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Next-generation manufacturing involves increasing use of automation and data to enhance process efficiency. An important question for the chemical process industries, as new process systems (e.g., intensified processes) and new data modalities (e.g., images) are integrated with traditional plant automation concepts, will be how to best evaluate alternative strategies for data-driven modeling and synthesizing process data. Two methods which could be used to aid in this are those which aid in testing data-based techniques on-line, and those which enable various data-based techniques to be assessed in simulation. In this work, we discuss two techniques in this domain which can be …

Modified Q-Learning Method For Automatic Voltage Regulation In Wide-Area Multigeneration Systems, Brook Abegaz, Sina Zarrabian

Engineering Science Faculty Publications

The state-estimation and optimal control of multigeneration systems are challenging for wide-area systems having numerous distributed automatic voltage regulators (AVR). This paper proposes a modified Q-learning method and algorithm that aim to improve the convergence of the approach and enhance the dynamic response and stability of the terminal voltage of multiple generators in the experimental Western System Coordinating Council (WSCC) and large-scale IEEE 39-bus test systems. The large-scale experimental testbed consists of a six-area, 39-bus system having ten generators that are connected to ten AVRs. The implementation shows promising results in providing stable terminal voltage profiles and other system parameters …

Soft-Mask De-Mixing For Anechoic Mixtures, Swarnadeep Bagchi, Ruairí De Fréin

Articles

This paper extends a computationally efficient, soft-mask based source separation (SS) technique called Redress, to anechoic mixing scenarios. SS methods are an integral part of hearing aid research. We call the resulting method D-Redress. In its original form, Redress was intended for instantaneous mixing scenarios. Numerical evaluations demonstrate that soft-mask based techniques reduce the level of artifacts in the separated speech. Monte Carlo trials on 1000 real speech mixtures demonstrate that the D-Redress successfully extends Redress in terms of Overall-Perceptual (OPS), Target-Perceptual (TPS) scores and Human-Ear Intelligibility (HEI).

Halide Perovskites Enable Polaritonic Xy Spin Hamiltonian At Room Temperature, Renjie Tao, Kai Peng, Louis Haeberlé, Quanwei Li, Dafei Jin, Graham R. Fleming, Stéphane Kéna-Cohen, Xiang Zhang, Wei Bao

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Exciton polaritons, the part-light and part-matter quasiparticles in semiconductor optical cavities, are promising for exploring Bose–Einstein condensation, non-equilibrium many-body physics and analogue simulation at elevated temperatures. However, a room-temperature polaritonic platform on par with the GaAs quantum wells grown by molecular beam epitaxy at low temperatures remains elusive. The operation of such a platform calls for long-lifetime, strongly interacting excitons in a stringent material system with large yet nanoscale-thin geometry and homogeneous properties. Here, we address this challenge by adopting a method based on the solution synthesis of excitonic halide perovskites grown under nanoconfinement. Such nanoconfinement growth facilitates the synthesis …

B2b2: Lidar 2d Mapping Rover, Laurence Kim, Isaiah Youngblood, Quintion Turner

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Autonomous machines are becoming more popular and useful with even self-driving cars being a thing of the present. Most of these machines navigate using cameras and LiDAR which does not detect glass, therefore the machines give misleading results when objects and obstacles are transparent to the wavelengths of the light used. This is problematic in modern building floor plans with glass walls. A solution is to build a ROS system that fuses ultrasonic sensors with LiDAR sensors in order for a robot to navigate in a building that has glass walls. Using both sensors, the final product is a robot …

Wage Wizard, Jack Davey, Kyle Felip Mondina, Brett Rimmer

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Wage theft is a severe problem in Santa Clara County, with the Santa Clara Wage Theft Coalition identifying more than 25,000 local wage theft cases as of 20211. In this study we will be addressing the issue of wage theft particularly in the Santa Clara County caregiving industry. Wage theft is prevalent in the caregiving industry for several reasons. First, the industry employs many migrant Filipino workers who are unaware of their legal rights and protections or even the fact if they are experiencing wage theft or not. Second, the sizable undocumented portion of these workers are coerced to lower …

Photon Attenuation Layer Silicon-Based X-Ray Detector: Quantum Efficiency Investigation And Algorithmic Processing Of Individual Detection Events, Kevin Larkin

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

State-of-the-art X-ray detectors either use silicon direct detection—which is inefficient, as silicon is mostly transparent to high-energy X-rays—or rely on expensive scintillators to first down-convert X-ray photons to lower energies. Dr. Eldred Lee of Dartmouth College recently completed doctoral research that suggested the promise of a novel alternative: silicon-based X-ray detectors that utilize photon attenuation layers rather than scintillators. While Dr. Lee’s work is certainly rigorous and meritorious, background noise controls were rendered less effective by circumstances. The work presented in this thesis succeeded in implementing much better background noise controls for a series of new tests to compare the …

Knowledge-Driven Drug-Use Namedentity Recognition With Distant Supervision, Goonmeet Bajaj, Ugur Kursuncu, Manas Gaur, Usha Lokala, Ayaz Hyder, Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Amit Sheth

Publications

As Named Entity Recognition (NER) has been essential in identifying critical elements of unstructured content, generic NER tools remain limited in recognizing entities specific to a domain, such as drug use and public health. For such high-impact areas, accurately capturing relevant entities at a more granular level is critical, as this information influences real-world processes. On the other hand, training NER models for a specific domain without handcrafted features requires an extensive amount of labeled data, which is expensive in human effort and time. In this study, we employ distant supervision utilizing a domain-specific ontology to reduce the need for …

Emergency Hot Car Alert System, Alexander Lopez, Ryan Marquis, Christopher Park

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Children and pets are often forgotten in vehicles, and on hot days this can lead to heat-stroke, coma, and death. To avoid such preventable deaths, we designed a device that would be able to detect the presence of a vulnerable entity, such as a baby, with a temperature sensor and volatile organic compounds sensor. Once occupancy is recognized while the vehicle engine is off, the device will monitor the ambient temperature and will respond in real-time if the environment is deemed unsafe by triggering our alert system. The anticipated outcome is to avoid preventable deaths due to heat-stroke inside a …

Memristive Synaptic Device Based On A Natural Organic Material - Honey For Spiking Neural Network In Biodegradable Neuromorphic Systems, Brandon Sueoka, Feng Zhao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Spiking neural network (SNN) in future neuromorphic architectures requires hardware devices to be not only capable of emulating fundamental functionalities of biological synapse such as spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) and spike-rate dependent plasticity (SRDP), but also biodegradable to address current ecological challenges of electronic waste. Among different device technologies and materials, memristive synaptic devices based on natural organic materials have emerged as the favorable candidate to meet these demands. The metal-insulator-metal structure is analogous to biological synapse with low power consumption, fast switching speed and simulation of synaptic plasticity, while natural organic materials are water soluble, renewable and environmentally friendly. …

A New Approach To Machine Learning Hardware Classifier Design Based On Functional Decomposition Of Multi-Valued Functions, Saad Mohammad Al-Askaar

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation presents a novel design of a hardware classifier based on combining modified Ashenhurst-Curtis Decomposition and multiplexer-based synthesis. The PSUD classifier brings three new contributions: an approach to solve the column multiplicity problem, an approach to encode multiple-valued variables, and a decomposition algorithm based on modified Ashenhurst-Curtis Decomposition. One of the biggest challenges in Boolean function decomposition is the variable partitioning problem. Thus, we introduce a new representation of two combined classifiers for multiple-valued functions to overcome the variable partitioning problem which allows finding the minimal column multiplicity and consequently to find high quality decompositions leading to a good …

Quantum Computing And Resilient Design Perspectives For Cybersecurity Of Feedback Systems, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Jihan Abou Halloun, Henrique Oyama, Samantha Cherney, Ilham Azali Assoumani, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Helen Durand, Simon Ka Ng

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity of control systems is an important issue in next-generation manufac- turing that can impact both operational objectives (safety and performance) as well as process designs (via hazard analysis). Cyberattacks differ from faults in that they can be coordinated efforts to exploit system vulnerabilities to create otherwise unlikely hazard scenarios. Because coordination and targeted process manipulation can be characteristics of attacks, some of the tactics previously analyzed in our group from a control system cybersecurity perspective have incorporated randomness to attempt to thwart attacks. The underlying assumption for the generation of this randomness has been that it can be achieved …

Hardware And Software Infrastructure For An Agricultural Sensor Network, Bennett Dorsey, Mariela Zuniga

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the rise of low-power processing and the availability of cheap solar, our project aims to create a low-power sensor network that can gather and report data with little oversight. The project will use a bluetooth mesh network to create a generalized solution where the network can start up regardless of the environment or number of nodes. Our tasks include designing algorithms that tackle redundancy in the face of node failure, self test and diagnostics, and power on and off strategies. The project aims to solve the problem of timing and communication when power is inconsistent and not shared. Our …

Monofacial Vs Bifacial Solar Photovoltaic Systems In Snowy Environments, Koami Soulemane Hayibo, Aliaksei Petsiuk, Pierce Mayville, Laura Brown, Joshua M. Pearce

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

There has been a recent surge in interest in the more accurate snow loss estimates for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems as large-scale deployments move into northern latitudes. Preliminary results show bifacial modules may clear snow faster than monofacial PV. This study analyzes snow losses on these two types of systems using empirical hourly data including energy, solar irradiation and albedo, and open-source image processing methods from images of the arrays in a northern environment in the winter. Projection transformations based on reference anchor points and snowless ground truth images provide reliable masking and optical distortion correction with fixed surveillance cameras. …

Barrier Knockdown Test Control System For The Cal Poly Kinesiology Department, Regina M. Chapuis

Computer Engineering

The goal of this project is to design and implement a new control system for the LEDs and buttons on an existing Barrier Knockdown setup in the Cal Poly Kinesiology department. The Barrier Knockdown test is a testing apparatus in which subjects knock down a series of mechanical barriers in one of three patterns. The computer system times their reaction and movement time, and the test as a whole provides students with data to study the phenomenon of Contextual Interference. This system was previously controlled by an old computer setup that ultimately crashed. This project recreates the logic and user …

Controlling Temperature Of Dc-Dc Converter Using Switching Frequency Adjustment, Sajjad Ahsan, Arsalan Mughal, Mark Rapiz

Electrical Engineering

As DC-DC converter operates under different load conditions, the amount of loss within the converter varies accordingly. Consequently the temperature of the DC-DC converter will also change based on the load demand. For PWM based DC-DC converters, one factor that contributes to the loss; thus, the increase in temperature is the switching frequency at which the converter operates. The higher the switching frequency used, the bigger the switching loss and in turn the hotter the converter. In this project, the temperature of a DC-DC converter is controlled by changing the switching frequency used by the converter. The hardware investigation used …

Hybrid Ac/Dc Light Bulb, Celina Mendez, Kristian Vincent Cruz, Nouman Baryal

Electrical Engineering

A hybrid AC/DC house aims to maximize the use of AC electricity from the utility grid and DC electricity from renewable energy sources such as roof-top solar panels. The hybrid system will therefore improve the reliability of the electrical by enabling power to be delivered to the loads even when one of the sources is not operational. One of the critical loads that every house needs is lighting. The hybrid AC/DC system should therefore be reliably facilitating the power delivery to the lighting. In this project, a localized hybrid AC/DC for LED light bulbs is designed and constructed. The hybrid …

Smartphone Control Of Rc Cars, Weston R. Fitzgerald

Electrical Engineering

The smartphone-controlled RC (remote-controlled) car is an inexpensive remote-controlled car designed to be fast and portable. Instead of manufacturing, packaging, and shipping a separate controller, the remote control is implemented in a phone application, which saves time and money in both the design process and the manufacturing process. Utilizing the user’s smartphone is more cost-effective since mobile devices are a common recurrence, and packaging fewer devices results in overall better portability of the product.

This smartphone-controlled car is speedy and intuitive to learn for typical smartphone users. The user can change the car’s speed and direction wirelessly using their phone; …

Hybrid Ac/Dc House: The Road To A Sustainable Future, Nicholas Mcadams, Luis Rodriguez

Electrical Engineering

The Hybrid AC/DC house is a sustainable alternative to preexisting residential power systems. The implementation of a DC bus in current homes will allow inefficient DC-AC and AC-DC conversions to be circumvented. This provides a direct path for current to flow to DC loads from DC sources such as solar panels to minimize power losses. In doing so, this will give users the ability to power their homes strictly from renewable sources and substantially decrease reliance on the utility. For this purpose, the hybrid AC/DC house is also designed in such a way to be entirely grid-independent to provide power …

Behind The Ear (Bte) Hearing Aid, Marco Gaitan, Jaclyn Kimoto, Lawrence Lai, Billy Pho

Electrical Engineering

The product is a Behind The Ear (BTE) hearing aid with the capability to improve the quality of life for people with mild to severe hearing loss and caters to a different consumer through bold exterior design to increase awareness of deafness and normalize hearing loss. In comparison to In The Ear (ITE) and In The Canal (ITC) hearing aids, the BTE hearing aid provides the best amplification while retaining an affordable price. Sound amplification depends on two or more directional microphones embedded in the product to give users the ability to discern the direction of incoming sound easily in …

Microgrid Energy Storage Branch, Evan Luu, Jeffrey Shieh

Electrical Engineering

The microgrid is the future for the electrical utility system. Because of this, future power engineers need to be well-versed in this topic when they go into industry. Cal Poly has created a microgrid laboratory for this very purpose. However, it is missing its battery based energy storage branch. Due to safety concerns, a traditional chemical battery is not suitable for student use. In order to maintain Cal Poly’s learn-by-doing approach, an alternative solution must be implemented. A regenerative power supply meets the criteria for student use. It is capable of simulating the sinking and sourcing capabilities of a battery …

Multi-Effect Guitar Pedal, Ryan K. Madden

Electrical Engineering

This product is a multi-effect pedal to be used with an electric guitar. This unit can distort and overdrive the weak signal from a guitar as well as add chorus, phaser, and compressor effects to the signal. Additionally, the user can choose different serial combinations of the effects, allowing full creativity and experimentation with a multitude of signal chain options. This product, having many different effects, saves space than if the effects were all individual devices. To interact with the product, there is a user interface with buttons, LEDs, and an OLED screen to allow the user to customize the …

Carrier Card For Nvidia Jetson Agx Xavier, Kyle Chang

Electrical Engineering

This project prototypes and implements custom carrier cards for interfacing with the Nvidia Jetson AGX Javier within the Zendar Processing Unit (ZPU). The Jetson module is an AI computer used as a computing system for autonomous machines, including robots, drones, and self-driving cars. The carrier card functions as an I/O interface with the Jetson module, and it is designed for and sponsored by Zendar, a start-up designing high-resolution radar imaging systems. The purpose of the carrier card is to function as a collection of multiple I/O interfaces, including HDMI, USB, and PCIE, for users to control the Jetson, to input …

Sunsation’S Solar Powered Picnic Table, Michelle M. Barnett, Christopher Barber, Casey Durham, David Mason

Mechanical Engineering

Team SunSation is an interdisciplinary senior design project group that was tasked with developing a semi-permanent seating area for Cal Poly's electrical engineering courtyard. The EE courtyard is populated with plastic folding tables and chairs that are slowly falling apart. Dale Dolan, the head of the EE department, requested that a table design be developed that incorporates the use of solar panels. The addition of the solar panels to the table would help promote clean renewable energy as well as provide shade to those sitting in the courtyard.

The solution that SunSation arrived at is broken up into mechanical/structural, electrical, …

8 Dof Quadrupedal Hopping Robot, Clayton T. Elwell, John Bennett, Tyler Mccue, Daniel Munic

Mechanical Engineering

The goal of our senior project was to fabricate an eight degree of freedom (DOF) prototypical quadrupedal robot, develop a controller than commands the quadruped to repeatedly jump 10 cm in the air, and fabricate a modular test stand to safely deploy our controller on the quadruped. The creation of a functional quadruped will bring attention to Dr. Siyuan Xing and Charlie Refvem’s research group, Cal Poly Legged Robots, and will give future Cal Poly undergraduate and graduate students a learning tool to explore dynamic control of biomimetic robotic systems.

Over the course of our senior project, we successfully manufactured …

Dual-Axis Precision Imager, Gary Huarng

Computer Engineering

The Dual-Axis Precision Imager (DAPI) is a drawing robot that processes images and draws them on a whiteboard. The system has two modes: a Sobel filter mode that finds the edges of the input image with a Sobel filter, and a tri-tone grayscale mode that approximates the shading of the input image with the colors white, gray, and black. The DAPI consists of an Arduino-controlled XY gantry system with a pen mounted on the gantry head, and a Processing IDE program that processes the original image, converts the processed image into gantry instructions, and sends them to the Arduino for …

Imnets: Deep Learning Using An Incremental Modular Network Synthesis Approach For Medical Imaging Applications, Redha A. Ali, Russell C. Hardie, Barath Narayanan Narayanan, Temesguen Messay

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Deep learning approaches play a crucial role in computer-aided diagnosis systems to support clinical decision-making. However, developing such automated solutions is challenging due to the limited availability of annotated medical data. In this study, we proposed a novel and computationally efficient deep learning approach to leverage small data for learning generalizable and domain invariant representations in different medical imaging applications such as malaria, diabetic retinopathy, and tuberculosis. We refer to our approach as Incremental Modular Network Synthesis (IMNS), and the resulting CNNs as Incremental Modular Networks (IMNets). Our IMNS approach is to use small network modules that we call SubNets …

A Nano-Drone Safety Architecture, Connor J. Sexton

Master's Theses

As small-form factor drones grow more intelligent, they increasingly require more sophisticated capabilities to record sensor data and system state, ensuring safe and improved operation. Already regulations for black boxes, electronic data recorders (EDRs), for determining liabilities and improving the safety of large-form factor autonomous vehicles are becoming established. Conventional techniques use hardened memory storage units that conserve all sensor (visual) and system operational state; and N-way redundant models for detecting uncertainty in system operation. For small-form factor drones, which are highly limited by weight, power, and computational resources, these techniques become increasingly prohibitive. In this paper, we propose a …