Engineering Commons^™

Investigation Of An Optimized Occupancy-Driven Hvac Control Strategy And Development Of A Scalable House/Grid Simulation, Kaleb Pattawi

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

Energy consumption in buildings is projected to increase more than 50% by 2050. Renewable energy sources are expected to increase and will help alleviate some of the energy demand; however, the intermittent nature of renewables makes it tough to effectively use energy in buildings. Various pricing schemes, including time of use electricity pricing, are used to encourage users to shift loads. Buildings need to be able to proactively react to changing energy sources and electricity prices in order to reduce over-generation of electricity and save money. This work demonstrates an optimized Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) control strategy that …

Adaptive Navigation Of Three-Dimensional Scalar Fields With Multiple Uavs, Robert Ka-Hing Lee

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Adaptive Navigation (AN) control strategies allow an agent to autonomously alter its trajectory based on realtime measurements of its environment. Compared to conventional navigation methods, AN techniques can potentially reduce the time and energy needed to explore scalar characteristics of unknown and dynamic regions of interest (e.g., temperature, concentration level). Multiple Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) approaches to AN can improve performance by exploiting synchronized spatially-dispersed measurements to generate realtime information regarding the structure of the local scalar field for use in navigation decisions. This dissertation presents initial results of a comprehensive program to develop, verify, and experimentally implement mission-level AN …

The Emily Dickinson Machine & Hybrid Poetry Generation, Juliana Shihadeh

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

This thesis introduces EMILY, a machine that creates original poems in the style of renowned poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s succinct and syntactically distinct style with unconventional punctuation makes for an interesting challenge for automated poetry creation. Furthermore, we adapt EMILY to answer the following hypothetical question: What if Emily Dickinson had collaborated with another poet from a different time period? To this end, we introduce Hybrid Generative Poetry, which simultaneously integrates poetic elements from multiple poets. Using two distinct approaches to Hybrid Poetry generation, we create poetry in the combined styles of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. User studies are …

Hydration Automation: Smart Tank, Peter Ferguson

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Agriculture is a huge field that can benefit from Internet of Things (IoT) with many solutions focused around the monitoring and management of water in irrigation or storage systems. Different types of sensors to measure water quality, amount, flow and pressure are used to monitor the health of these systems and actuators are deployed like pumps or valves to manage the water in theses systems. The Hydration Automation (HA) automated water monitoring and management system utilizes low cost, small form factor, and sustainable Sensing Units (SUs) to collect water level reading of water storage systems through the use of an …

Seamless Container Migration Between Cloud And Edge, Aditya Mohan, Jonathan Yezalaleul, Angeline Chen, Tamir Enkhjargal

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Considering the limited resources of edge devices, it is essential to monitor their current resource utilization and device resource allocation strategies that assign containers to edge and cloud nodes based on their priority. Edge containers may need to be migrated to a cloud platform to reduce the load of edge devices and allow for running missions critical applications. In this case, we proposed a prioritization method to exchange containers between the edge and cloud, while trying to assign delay-sensitive containers to edge nodes. We evaluate the performance of running Docker container management systems on resource-constrained machines such as Raspberry Pi, …

Enhanced Sensing Methods For Uav-Based Disaster Recovery, Connor Azzarello, Chris Gerbino, Ruchir Mehta

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Natural and human-caused disasters devastate and displace civilian populations. Over the past century, the rate at which these catastrophes occur has increased dramatically. Climate change and unsustainable human behaviors are large contributors to the occurrence of natural disasters, therefore it is likely this upward trend will continue. The region of the world where a disaster takes place often determines how severe the implications are for the affected civilians. The devastation that occurs from a disaster is much greater in low-resourced regions of the world.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are commonly used to assist first responders during disaster response. The existing …

Drone-Based Wireless Communications For Disaster Recovery, Mark Rizko, Cameron Burdsall

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This project aims to establish a drone system that can deploy a wireless mesh network over a disaster area, which would aid in the process of finding survivors by using wireless communications to identify where victims are and allow authorities to send out alerts to people in the area. We also seek to add a device detection feature that would allow the drones to passively look for devices through WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy, giving disaster responders the ability to actively identify specific devices, locate zones where victims lie, and discern a rough population estimate of that area. Those that …

Create: Creative Resources To Express Art Through Engagement, Katherine Sanchez, Ari Soriano

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

To address the current mental health crisis, we propose a platform for co-creative systems that users can utilize as art/music therapy. Art therapy can be an effective way of self-expression that results in psychological benefits and improved mood. We analyze the effectiveness of 8 different systems, 4 musical and 4 art-based. These systems allow the users to create while the computer interacts and responds to their input. The results are evaluated on a before and after emotional assessment that we issue to the user. We targeted college age students and distributed our platform to Santa Clara University students during a …

Alzheimer’S Disease Diagnostic Support Tool, Chelsea Fernandes, Shreya Venkatesh, Aiyushi Kumar

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Alzheimer’s Disease is the 6th leading cause of death overall and the most common cause of dementia in older people in the US. The prevalence of the disease is projected to increase in the next few decades and disproportionately impact low/middle income populations. Unfortunately, specialized doctors, such as neurologists, may not be present in situations where a diagnosis is necessary, resulting in the possibility of AD being overlooked at its early and most treatable stages. Our proposed application is a tool that can aid doctors in determining a probable AD diagnosis using an inputted combination of imaging data, biomarkers, patient …

Improved Hyperparameter Tuning For Graph Learning With Warm-Start Configuration, Drew Ligman

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

With the increasing size and complexity of machine learning datasets, obtaining highly performing prediction models in various tasks has become increasingly difficult. In particular, the processs of hyperparameter optimization (HPO) contributes a significant portion of this cost. This work examines a specific graph-machine learning model, graph convolutional networks (GCN), to derive a hyperparameter configuration with optimal performance across a variety of datasets. We motivate our configuration theoretically and validate it empirically through comprehensive experimentation. We find that for GCN semi-supervised classification tasks, our configuration performs nearly optimally when compared against traditional HPO while only requiring a fraction of the budget. …

Bluetooth Security Of Colocated Apps On Android, Sean Kelker, Omar Garcia

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The Bluetooth protocol is used millions of times per day, as a means of short-range wireless communication. Many of these connections are between a phone running the Android operating system and an external device. Due to Android’s implementation of Bluetooth, however, unrelated applications that are co-located on the phone have the potential to stealthily send and receive communications from any device that is connected. Our project involves creating malicious applications to investigate the effectiveness of this attack on real-world devices, and we show that the vulnerability above has practical applications. We also create a defense against this attack by modifying …

Predictive Energy Optimization Model For Grid-Interactive Residential Buildings, Patrick J. Mccurdy

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

The consumption and production of energy are more dynamic as distributed energy resources (DER) such as solar photovoltaic (PV) are deployed within the electric distribution system. The traditional energy price at a predetermined rate cannot accommodate these dynamics and can lead to wasted energy and higher costs for both utility companies and consumers. Commercial building and residential energy management systems are usually on a fixed schedule and are not able to respond to changes in energy price instantaneously. There is a need for a real-time pricing structure that can accommodate the fluctuating cost of energy based on supply and demand, …

Dynamic Shading System, Alexander Kravtsov, Walker Battey

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Long exposure to UV-light radiation can lead to accelerated skin aging and skin cancer. Children are the most susceptible group to the dangers of high UV radiation because of their sensitive skin. Solar shading can provide the staff and clients of Kids on Campus with a way to prevent over-exposure to UV-light radiation by replacing the existing shading structure with a structure that offers significantly better protection from harmful rays. This new structure is also cost-effective, sustainable, and automated. By using a light calibrating sensor that calculates the UV index, we created a dynamic shading system to control and reduce …

Machine Learning Based Model For The Detection Of Brain Aneurysms From Mr Angiography, Katherine Becknell, Claire Bushnell, Rachel Fitzsimmons, Emily Sumner

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

A brain aneurysm is a thin or weak spot on a blood vessel wall that expands and fills with blood. Brain aneurysms are very dangerous due to the fact that in most cases, patients do not show any symptoms. Because of this, aneurysms are difficult to diagnose unless it becomes very large or ruptures, resulting in fatal hemorrhage.

Aneurysms can be detected by a number of different brain imaging methods including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA), Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) and other imaging methods but for the sake of this report we will only be focusing on …

Is Social Diversity Related To Misinformation Resistance? An Empirical Study On Social Communities, I Chang, Orion Sun, Jasper Sang Ahn

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Misinformation has become a pervasive issue on online social media. Whether it is spread purposefully with ill intent or accidentally through ignorance, misinformation can be dangerous and create confusion in those who are affected by it. The investigation presented in this paper found that no research has been performed that directly examine the correlation between a social community’s misinformation resistance and diversity. This project utilizes CrowdTangle, a tool to gather data from Facebook groups, along with machine learning models to determine if this correlation can be drawn. We were able to find correlations between some diversity metrics with misinformation resistance …

Multi-Class Multi-Intersection Iot-Based Vehicle Counting, Jay Ladhad, Colin Rioux, Maggie Dong, Chris Tian, Donovan Allen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Traffic management is an important public infrastructure component that can greatly benefit from an intelligent reactive system. Vehicle counting is a vital aspect of an intelligent traffic system that could mitigate traffic congestion and increase the efficiency of traffic lights. While previous research has made progress in developing machine learning algorithms for vehicle counting and tracking, they did not have any hardware constraints and were not designed to run on IoT devices in real time. Our team proposes a decentralized method of vehicle counting and tracking through a system of IoT devices, namely Jetson Xavier NX’s, that communicate vehicle identification …

Crossroad - Avoid Crowd Intelligence, Xukun Zhang, Yuzheng Wu, Haochen Zhang

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Nowadays, waiting takes big chunks of daily-life activity. People may always find themselves facing long queues, waiting in a crowded facility, even when they have tried to avoid peak hours. Heading to a highly populated public area may have felt like heading to a battlefield. Without access to the real-time information of the facility, people start to discover that waiting starts to become an unpredictable event that can sometimes delay their schedule or even worse. This project serves as a solution to tackle this lack of transparency. Crossroad aims to combine facilities’ cameras with micro-controller to see the engagement of …

Real-Time Multi-Camera Traffic Intersection Analysis On Iot Devices, Ethan Paek, Tyler Niiyama, Justin Liu, Spencer Tsang, Kent Ngo, Jackson Tseng

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The continuous growth of urban and suburban areas has increased the number of commuters and general transportation along central roadways, which has resulted in a trend of more traffic congestion in essential areas every year. This creates a challenge for civil engineers to improve the efficiency of the traffic intersection systems. Our team worked on this issue by building a system to improve traffic intersection analysis by video camera to count cars using multiple camera angles at a single intersection. By providing better real-time traffic network analysis, civil engineers can more accurately monitor the efficiency of traffic intersections and then …

Smart Grid Security Simulator, Christopher Woo

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Smart Pantry, Audrey Hou, Sukruth Krishnakumar, Jacob Lucke

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Two-thirds of food waste at home is due to food going bad before it is used. Mitigating this food waste would mean keeping track of groceries’ shelf lives, which is a time sink. Our solution is a grocery monitoring system that tracks grocery items, saves time, and makes meal planning more convenient and efficient through recipe recommendation. Tracking groceries is accomplished through using a camera in tandem with weight sensors. Grocery items are identified using computer vision to avoid the tedium of manually inputting grocery information. With the data collected, a dashboard is generated with groceries currently on the scale …

Urban Planning Optimization Via “Cities: Skylines”, Carter Duncan, Jack Cunningham, Andrew Wang, Alexander Kennedy

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have recently become a hot topic in terms of software solutions to complex problems. Every year, new prototypes and projects are created to solve specific problems, ranging from self-driving vehicles to facial recognition. One project which interested our team was OpenAI Five, which created an artificial intelligence agent to play the complex online competitive game DotA 2. We wanted to create our own agent to design optimized city layouts in the game Cities: Skylines. By doing so, we hope to illustrate the viability of using artificial intelligence as a tool in urban planning for real …

Stickars: Effortlessly Apply A Fun Overlay To The Real World, Théo Arrouye, Jackson Centeno, Morgan Fleshren, Vasilis Odysseos

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Augmented Reality (AR) technology has slowly seeped into the mainstream as many mobile phone manufacturers increasingly develop hardware and software that enable AR applications. While the technology has been available for the past few years, there are not many compelling AR applications available on mobile phones. Additionally, shared AR experiences are difficult to produce and share. In order to create a compelling AR application, we created StickARs, an iOS application that makes it easy to create and share AR experiences , by placing virtual stickers anywhere in the world.

StickARs allows users to choose from a predefined set of sticker …

Nicaragua Weather Application, Alexa Grau, Justin Ling, Greta Seitz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

ASDENIC is an organization that partners with local farmers and citizens in northern Nicaragua to provide resources and information to ensure the safety of residents and optimize agricultural techniques. Currently, a singular, localized weather station collects useful information on patterns that can be used for indicators, yet the data requires manual processing and there is not a system in place to report the findings. The current method of information transfer is in person during weekly meetings which can be ineffective and inconsistent.

In continuation of a previous project focused on sharing water quality information, our mobile application acts as a …

Understanding Covid-19 Public Sentiment Towards Public Health Policies Using Social Media Data, Olivia Figueira, Yuka Hatori, Liying Liang, Christine Chye

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, an overabundance of information related to the virus was released through social media. While more information can ultimately help people learn about the virus and how to protect themselves from it, there has been a lack of uniformity amongst individual states and the federal government in regards to policies and health guidelines (69), which may lead to the public being confused on the best guidelines to follow. There has also been an ideological divide driven by political polarization in the US on how to respond to this pandemic, causing greater contention (17; 86; …

Jamming Attack Workaround Study, Soren Madsen, Jack Schoen

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast growing industry with strong footholds in the smart home market featuring devices such as the Amazon Echo, Ring security cameras, smart TVs, and much more. However, it doesn’t stop there; the industrial sector has begun using smart devices for measurement, automated tasks, and time sensitive communication. Many of these devices have become reliant on WiFi technology and are vulnerable to attacks on the security of the protocols involved.

In this paper, we discuss the details of the deauthentication attack on WPA and WPA2 systems and propose a solution for detection and recovery …

Siheyuan, Andrea Horvath, Isabel Wu

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Learning Chinese as a second language often poses a challenge to students, and the extensive non-alphabetic script that accompanies it adds to the complexity of the language. It can take years for a student to feel comfortable writing with Chinese characters, and practice is a key component of this learning process. Most practice includes repetitive writing of the characters until the student memorizes the look and stroke order of a character, but this method could be improved with the addition of visuals and audio to enhance the learning experience. The stakeholders of this problem are students seeking to learn the …

Lightweight Speed Protocol, Zachary James Hardy

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In this project, we aimed to design and implement a network protocol, using existing C networking libraries as a foundational basis for expansion and elaboration. Our design, Lightweight Speed Protocol (LSP), aims to offer increased flexibility and adaptability for programmers utilizing our protocol compared to existing alternatives (such as TCP). LSP aims to offer these benefits by utilizing variable levels of encryption (specifiable by the programmer using our protocol) and customizable amounts of cache space to store these varying levels of encryption algorithms. In order to give developers as much flexibility as possible, we want to pass on to them …

Martha: Offline Streaming Media For Cameroonian Refugees, Sarah Ahmed, Marco Marenzi, Leila Scola

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

MARTHA is a mobile application intended to deliver educational content to refugees from Cameroon currently residing in Nigeria. Refugees were forced to flee after advocating for educational freedom, so education is of utmost importance to those residing in these refugee camps. Parents want their children to benefit from learning general educational content, as well as vocational content which is important for social mobility. Our application will display files that can be followed at the users’ pace. While the project entails two phases, the final goal is to have a Raspberry Pi act as a server and local database, allowing local …

Classifying Brainwaves For Brain-Computer Interface Technology, Derrick Wang, Brendan Lawler

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The intention of this project is to develop a brainwave classification system that will help restore the independence of those with severe motor function impairments. While current brain computer interface (BCI) technology offers a means of control for those with limited mobility, severely motor disabled individuals represent a population in need of methods to restore independent motor control. Thus, the objective of our project is to utilize neural signals from electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to develop a machine learning classifier. Since our specific goal is to help those with limited mobility, we are focusing on motion imagery tasks which elicit a …

Flow Visualization Of Bolus Microcapsule Delivery Through 3d Printed Microneedles, Sophie Quisling, Leana Vestal, Alexis Enstrom

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Microneedle arrays are an emerging technology that offers a novel drug delivery system to treat a variety of skin wounds and diseases. The needles deliver therapeutics to the epidermis layer of the skin and therefore establish advantageous qualities over the standard hypodermic needle as they are non-invasive, efficient in biologic absorption, and can be self-administered. This project investigates a custom 3D-printed hollow microneedle device created by a Santa Clara University Senior Design team in 2018 for microencapsulated cell extrusion to be applied for accelerated wound healing. The goal of our project is to operate in the therapeutic range for flowrate …