Computer Engineering Commons^™

Weight Controlled Electric Skateboard, Zachary Barram, Carson Bertozzi, Vishnu Dodballapur

Computer Engineering

Technology and the way that humans interact is becoming more vital and omnipresent with every passing day. However, human interface device designers suffer from the increasingly popular “designed for me or people like me” syndrome. This design philosophy inherently limits accessibility and usability of technology to those like the designer. This places severe limits of usability to those who are not fully able as well as leaves non-traditional human interface devices unexplored. This project set out to explore a previously uncharted human interface device, on an electric skateboard, and compare it send user experience with industry leading human interface devices.

Gold Tree Solar Farm - Machine Learning To Predict Solar Power Generation, Jonathon T. Scott

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Solar energy causes a strain on the electrical grid because of the uncontrollable nature of the factors that affect power generation. Utilities are often required to balance solar generation facilities to meet consumer demand, which often includes the costly process of activating/deactivating a fossil fuel facility. Therefore, there is considerable interest in increasing the accuracy and the granularity of solar power generation predictions in order to reduce the cost of grid management. This project aims to evaluate how sky imaging technology may contribute to the accuracy of those predictions.

The Soul Annoyed Robot: A Senior Project Report, Dayton Andrew Muxlow, Christian Johansen

Computer Engineering

Our goal for this senior project was to create a competitive robot designed to com- pete in Roborodentia 2019. Our project started during the Winter 2019 quarter, and ended with the competition on May 18, 2019. During that time, we developed an accurate solenoid shooting mechanism, an elevated conveyor belt to carry poker chips, and a servo arm to scoop in stacks of poker chips. These hardware compo- nents were attached to a circular differential-drive wooden base designed to be easy to control. We also planned out our match strategy and implemented this strategy with software written in C/Wiring to …

Planr.: Planar Learning Autonomous Navigation Robot, Gabrielle S. Santamorena, Daniel Kasman, Jesus Mercado, Ben Klave, Andrew Weisman, Anthony Fortner

Computer Engineering

PLANR is a self-contained robot capable of mapping a space and generating 2D floor plans of a building while identifying objects of interest. It runs Robot Operating System (ROS) and houses four main hardware components. An Arduino Mega board handles the navigation, while an NVIDIA Jetson TX2, holds most of the processing power and runs ROS. An Orbbec Astra Pro stereoscopic camera is used for recognition of doors, windows and outlets and the RPLiDAR A3 laser scanner is able to give depth for wall detection and dimension measurements. The robot is intended to operate autonomously and without constant human monitoring …

Bpm: Blz Package Manager, Kenneth Huang

Computer Engineering

bpm (BLZ Package Manager) is a package manager for the open-source programming language BLZ, built in Java. It allows users of the BLZ programming language to create and upload their own packages, as well as downloading necessary dependency packages for their packages. To do this, the program communicates with the “cardiovascular”, a web server designed for users to upload and download BLZ packages.

The program has three primary functions. The first one, “init”, initializes a package directory for use with the package manager. Part of this initialization is creating a “heartbeat” meta file, which holds information about the package’s name, …

Identifying Hourly Traffic Patterns With Python Deep Learning, Christopher L. Leavitt

Computer Engineering

This project was designed to explore and analyze the potential abilities and usefulness of applying machine learning models to data collected by parking sensors at a major metro shopping mall. By examining patterns in rates at which customer enter and exit parking garages on the campus of the Bellevue Collection shopping mall in Bellevue, Washington, a recurrent neural network will use data points from the previous hours will be trained to forecast future trends.

Don't Trip! A Quicker Way To Plan Your Trip, Jose Cruz Arinaga, Ryan Wong

Computer Engineering

Currently, Google Maps does not provide users with a way to find the optimal path for a user to travel given a list of points. Given a list of destinations you may want to visit, our web application will do all of the difficult planning for you and ultimately find the most optimal path for you to take to visit all of your destinations in a timely manner. The people who will benefit most from this application are tourists or people who travel often and want to explore an unfamiliar city. Even locals running their weekly errands could save time …

Vehicle Control Unit, Ayusman Saha

Computer Engineering

The Vehicle Control Unit (VCU) is the central computer for Cal Poly’s Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) formula electric race car. It is responsible for processing driver inputs, managing the electric motor, and providing a robust safety net in the case of system failure. Additional functionality of the system include a power limiting mechanism as well as a traction control system. All VCU logic had to abide by SAE International rules for the competition. This project focused solely on the firmware for the VCU.

Keylime, Joshua Michael Magera

Computer Engineering

New freshmen arrive at Cal Poly every year, experience Week of Welcome, and, if they haven’t been to Firestone Grill within the first week, they can consider themselves an anomaly. But how long until those freshmen find the amazing sandwiches and breakfast burritos served at Gus’s Grocery or hear about the free burger promo at Sylvester’s? The goal of this senior project was to create an app, KeyLime, that makes it easy for college students to find new eateries and fresh deals that are local, affordable, and tasty. KeyLime aims to target college students and create a space for restaurants …

Gr802.11 Jamming Detector, Grant A. Blake

Computer Engineering

One important component of a jamming-resistant 802.11 network is detecting the presence of a jammer during normal operation. This is required so that communications on the network can operate at full efficiency when no jammer is present, but switch to a less efficient, but more resilient protocol when the network is under attack. This paper describes a potential method for detecting some common forms of jamming, lays out a plan to test the effectiveness of the detection method, and summarizes the implementation and results of the test plan.

Raspberry Pi Enterprise Network Wifi Bridge, Dylan Halland, Riley Barrett

Computer Engineering

The goal of this project is to allow an IoT device, such as a Weemo Smart Plug, Amazon Echo, Gaming Console, or any other Wi-Fi enabled device to connect to a WPA_EAP Enterprise Network by using a Raspberry Pi Zero W as a packet forwarding device. Extra configuration steps are required for devices connecting to an enterprise network, and many devices are not compatible at all. By using a Wi-Fi Bridge, any device can easily obtain internet access by connecting to the Pi.

The system can be implemented on either one wireless card or two separate cards depending on the …

A Database For Indexable Carbide Inserts, Andrew Yoder

Computer Engineering

The indexable inserts project is a collaborative effort to aggregate into a single database as many indexable carbide inserts from as many manufacturers as possible. Inserts are generally labeled with a part number following a specific standard determined by shapes and measurements, however specifications for certain aspects of carbide inserts—such as which materials they can cut—can vary by manufacturer. There currently is not a way to search a comprehensive database containing tools from multiple manufacturers for a handful of inserts that would satisfy some necessary parameters, making finding the correct tool in a shop a much more time-consuming process than …

Labeling Paths With Convolutional Neural Networks, Sean Wallace, Kyle Wuerch

Computer Engineering

With the increasing development of autonomous vehicles, being able to detect driveable paths in arbitrary environments has become a prevalent problem in multiple industries. This project explores a technique which utilizes a discretized output map that is used to color an image based on the confidence that each block is a driveable path. This was done using a generalized convolutional neural network that was trained on a set of 3000 images taken from the perspective of a robot along with matching masks marking which portion of the image was a driveable path. The techniques used allowed for a labeling accuracy …

Tidalsim Senior Project Report, Kent Zhang, Colin Vandervoort

Computer Engineering

Throughout the course of this project, our team helped the Cal Poly Biological Sciences department refine an intertidal zone simulator. The aim of this device is to allow any marine biologist to easily simulate a vast range of tidal zones in order to test animal behaviors within these zones. Another goal of this project is to make each simulation tank independent from the others by using a single microcontroller to handle all inputs and outputs of the system as well as logging all relevant data. The current system is set up so that a separate microcontroller handles dissolved oxygen and …

Smart Dc Wall Outlet Design With Improved Load Voltage Detection, Patrick Donovon Granieri

Master's Theses

A standard home in the United States has access to the 120V AC power grid for use with home appliances. Many electronics used at home are powered by a DC power supply, which loses energy in the conversion from AC power. The DC House project avoids any conversion between AC and DC by storing energy in batteries as DC power and supplying it directly to DC appliances. While AC systems feature a standardized output voltage, no such standard exists for DC systems. The Smart DC Wall Outlet solves this by automatically adjusting its output voltage to meet any required DC …

Digital Forensics Challenge, Zoe Lie, Sydney Marie Mendoza

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Reach - A Community Service Application, Samuel Noel Magana

Computer Engineering

Communities are familiar threads that unite people through several shared attributes and interests. These commonalities are the core elements that link and bond us together. Many of us are part of multiple communities, moving in and out of them depending on our needs. These common threads allow us to support and advocate for each other when facing a common threat or difficult situation. Healthy and vibrant communities are fundamental to the operation of our society. These interactions within our communities define the way we as individuals interact with each other, and society at large. Being part of a community helps …

An Fpga Implementation Of Digital Guitar Effects, Carson James Robles

Computer Engineering

One of the most versatile aspects of the electric guitar is its ability to change its sound completely and on-the-fly through the use of effects pedals. Conventional guitar pedals contain one effect and can be chained together. The goal of this project is to serve as a contained multi-effects station with five popular electric guitar effects packed into one product. On top of this, the effects each have two tunable parameters to allow users to dial in the exact tone they are looking for. All of the signal processing done in this project is conducted on an FPGA which also …

Multi-Vector Tracking Of Wifi And Zigbee Devices, Calvin Andrew Laverty

Master's Theses

Location privacy preservation has shifted to the forefront of discussions about next generation wireless networks. While pseudonym-changing schemes have been proposed to preserve an individual's privacy, simulation has shown that new association attack models render these schemes useless. The major contribution of this thesis is the implementation of a tracking network with commodity hardware on the California Polytechnic State University campus which leverages the combination of de-anonymization strategies on captured wireless network data to show the effectiveness of a pseudonym-changing scheme for wireless identification across WiFi and Zigbee protocols.

Surveying Underwater Shipwrecks With Probabilistic Roadmaps, Amy Jeannette Lewis

Master's Theses

Almost two thirds of the Earth's surface is covered in ocean, and yet, only about 5% of it is mapped. There are an unknown amount of sunken ships, planes, and other artifacts hidden below the sea. Extensive search via boat and a sonar tow fish following a standard lawnmower pattern is used to identify sites of interest. Then, if a site has been determined to potentially be historically significant, the most common next step is a survey by either a human dive team or remotely operated vehicle. These are time consuming, error prone, and potentially dangerous options, but autonomous underwater …

Grammar-Based Procedurally Generated Village Creation Tool, Kevin Matthew Graves

Computer Engineering

This project is a 3D village generator tool for Unity. It consists of three components: a building, mountain, and river generator. All of these generators use grammar-based procedural generation in order to create a unique and logical village and landscape each time the program is run.

Evaluating Creative Choice In K-12 Computer Science Curriculum, Kirsten L. Mork

Master's Theses

Computer Science is an increasingly important topic in K-12 education. Ever since the "computing crisis" of the early 2000s, where enrollment in CS dropped by over half in a five year span, increasing research has gone into improving and broadening enrollment in CS courses. Research shows the importance of introducing CS at a young age and the need for more exposure for younger children and young adults alike in order to work towards equity in the field. While there are many reasons for disinterest in CS courses, studies found one reason young adults do not want to study CS is …

Robot Navigation In Cluttered Environments With Deep Reinforcement Learning, Ryan Weideman

Master's Theses

The application of robotics in cluttered and dynamic environments provides a wealth of challenges. This thesis proposes a deep reinforcement learning based system that determines collision free navigation robot velocities directly from a sequence of depth images and a desired direction of travel. The system is designed such that a real robot could be placed in an unmapped, cluttered environment and be able to navigate in a desired direction with no prior knowledge. Deep Q-learning, coupled with the innovations of double Q-learning and dueling Q-networks, is applied. Two modifications of this architecture are presented to incorporate direction heading information that …

Comparison Of Lqr And Lqr-Mrac For Linear Tractor-Trailer Model, Kevin Richard Gasik

Master's Theses

The United States trucking industry is immense. Employing over three million drivers and traveling to every city in the country. Semi-Trucks travel millions of miles each week and encompass roads that civilians travel on. These vehicles should be safe and allow efficient travel for all. Autonomous vehicles have been discussed in controls for many decades. Now fleets of autonomous vehicles are beginning their integration into society. The ability to create an autonomous system requires domain and system specific knowledge. Approaches to implement a fully autonomous vehicle have been developed using different techniques in control systems such as Kalman Filters, Neural …

My Baseball Collection App, Nicolas A. Parra

Computer Science and Software Engineering

My Baseball Collection is an iOS application that aims to simplify the management and expansion of physical baseball trading card collections. The app allows users to digitize their baseball card collection by uploading images of cards they possess, creating a wishlist of cards they are seeking, and viewing the collections and wishlists of other users. This project seeks to provide quality of life improvements to those within the baseball card trading community and to further facilitate communication and trading in an online world.

Relevance Analysis For Document Retrieval, Eric Labouve

Master's Theses

Document retrieval systems recover documents from a dataset and order them according to their perceived relevance to a user’s search query. This is a difficult task for machines to accomplish because there exists a semantic gap between the meaning of the terms in a user’s literal query and a user’s true intentions. Even with this ambiguity that arises with a lack of context, users still expect that the set of documents returned by a search engine is both highly relevant to their query and properly ordered. The focus of this thesis is on document retrieval systems that explore methods of …

A Survey Of Virtual Network Architectures, Lenoy Avidan

Computer Science and Software Engineering

With the storage needs of the world increasing, especially with the growth of cloud computing, data centers are being utilized more than ever. The increasing need of storage has led to more use of virtualization to help intra and inter data center communications. The virtualization of physical networks is used to help achieve this goal, but with the creation of Virtual Networks, systems must be designed to create, manage, and secure them. A Virtual Network Architecture is the system design for creating and maintaining virtual network components and the resulting networks they create. Different companies design different Virtual Network Architectures, …

Localization Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shannon D. Fong

Computer Engineering

With the increased accessibility to powerful GPUs, ability to develop machine learning algorithms has increased significantly. Coupled with open source deep learning frameworks, average users are now able to experiment with convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to solve novel problems. This project sought to train a CNN capable of classifying between various locations within a building. A single continuous video was taken while standing at each desired location so that every class in the neural network was represented by a single video. Each location was given a number to be used for classification and the video was subsequently titled locX. These …

Assessing Risk In Iot Devices, David Levitsky

Master's Theses

The explosive growth of the Internet of Things ecosystem has thrust these devices into the center of our lives. Unfortunately, the desire to create these devices has been stronger than the one to secure them. Recent attacks have shown us ignoring security in Internet of Things devices can cause severe harm in both a digital and physical sense. This thesis outlines a framework for developers and managers to assess the risk of IoT devices using a weighted scoring system across five different categories. Our case studies suggest that devices with higher security considerations have a better security posture and lower …

Amplifying The Prediction Of Team Performance Through Swarm Intelligence And Machine Learning, Erick Michael Harris

Master's Theses

Modern companies are increasingly relying on groups of individuals to reach organizational goals and objectives, however many organizations struggle to cultivate optimal teams that can maximize performance. Fortunately, existing research has established that group personality composition (GPC), across five dimensions of personality, is a promising indicator of team effectiveness. Additionally, recent advances in technology have enabled groups of humans to form real-time, closed-loop systems that are modeled after natural swarms, like flocks of birds and colonies of bees. These Artificial Swarm Intelligences (ASI) have been shown to amplify performance in a wide range of tasks, from forecasting financial markets to …