Computer Engineering Commons^™

Donation Pick-Up And Tracking App For Columbian Food Bank, Alex Fang, Arren Leung, Adrian Ramirez Lopez, Rodrigo Mejia

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Banco de Alimentos Cali is responsible for picking up food donations from local businesses, organizing by perishable dates, and distributing them to the communities in need. When donations are picked up from the donor, the bank is responsible for sending their donors a certificate with the donation's information, including the dollar equivalent of their donation. This certificate is sent out only if the donor requests it for tax deduction purposes. While this plan may seem simple in theory, the food bank often struggles to get the necessary information from their drivers in regards to the donation, which ultimately delays the …

Easycompost: Using Augmented Reality To Improve Reality, Jonathan Nguyen, Andrew Bredar

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In the United States, a significant portion of landfill is undiverted compost and recyclable material. Instead of being sent to landfills, compostable material can be used as nutrient rich fertilizer and soil in local communities. Likewise, recyclable material can be processed at appropriate facilities to reuse materials and reduce the demand for unsustainable resources, like plastics. We seek to reduce the portion of undiverted recyclable and compostable waste by aiding in the proper sorting of waste at common sites of disposal, particularly trash cans in cafeterias and restaurants. We have designed a mobile, augmented reality, 3D object detection model that …

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 …

Orient: Teaching Object Oriented Programming With Augmented Reality, Shivangi Kar, Stephanie Lu

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In our technologically advanced society, computational thinking is a critical skill for students to develop. Our project, ORIENT, is a mobile application that uses augmented reality to teach object-oriented programming(OOP), a fundamental concept in computer science. ORIENT is designed for novice programmers from the middle school level up, and it consists of a three-part tutorial series that teaches class creation, inheritance, and polymorphism-three of the most important tenets of object-oriented programming. ORIENT, which was built in Unity and made specifically for the iPad, includes a series of interactive tutorials with immediate feedback; it encourages students to explore OOP in a …

Brass: Bandwidth Reservation On Arista Switching Systems, Angelus Mcnally, Conrad Park, Tyler Tivadar

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

As networking technologies in the fields of Cloud, Fog, and Edge computing continue to gain popularity and widespread adoption, their contributions to network traffic load and congestion in their respective data processing layers are expected to increase. The implication of this inevitable change is that overall traffic congestion is expected to increase as more devices are connected. As a consequence of this congestion, network performance is expected to decrease, and the best effort nature of network traffic means that there is no guarantee that applications will continue to communicate at rates required for operation. This could prevent certain networking applications …

Deep Learning Pseudocode Generation: A Qualitative Analysis, Colin Rioux

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Pseudocode is a traditional teaching tactic in computer science, yet it is not standardized and programming language dependent. Thus, it can be quite time consuming to write it. With the advancement of AI methodologies in NLP, AI could help address this problem. This work investigates the quality of AI generated pseudocode from source code. Five studies are conducted in this work to measure pseudocode quality, where each study modifies model input to observe accuracy and generalizability. The results show that there is an association between pseudocode quality and training and test set similarity. Furthermore, a sizable and diverse training set …

Emt: Software-Based Energy Management Tool For Wifi Iot Devices, Aastha Chawla, Sreya Goyalia, Nidusha Kannan

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Many WiFi-based IoT (Internet of Things) devices rely on limited energy resources such as batteries or energy harvesting. Although monitoring and studying the energy consumption of these devices is essential, the use of external, hardware-based energy measurement tools is costly, non-scalable, and introduces many challenges regarding the connectivity of such tools with devices. In this thesis, we propose EMT, a novel tool to collect, analyze, and monitor the power cycles of IoT devices without the need for any external tools. The basic idea is to modify the WiFi Access Point's software to keep track of the power status of devices …

Collage Art Therapy Bot, Roland Afaga, Dyllon Au, Jeremy Victor Reyes, Alayna Wong

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Our Collage Art Therapy Bot is an application that utilizes collage therapy to help users navigate their feelings and give them a better understanding of themselves. Unlike other forms of art therapy, collage therapy is much more inclusive and does not require any artistics skill that may intimidate users from participating. The user interface is split into three sections: the photo library, the chat bot, and the photo collage. The user can scroll through the library and pick the photos that they feel connected to. Then, the chatbot prompts the user to tell it what made them choose the photo. …

Large Scale Database Audio Collection Of Tuberculosis Patients: : The Ekifuba Test, Jt Vinolus, Daniela De La Torre, Aimee Kerr, Jordan Randleman

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

One of the top 10 causes of death, 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis (TB) every year. And yet, in 2018, 1.7 billion people were infected with the disease (“Global Health - Newsroom - Tuberculosis.”). This 99.99% recovery rate demonstrates that, when treated with antibiotics, TB is an extremely curable condition, but an early diagnosis is critical to surviving the illness. Developing countries face the largest hurdles to accessing TB screening technologies, and they make up a disproportionately high fraction of worldwide TB deaths. A possible solution to this problem would be to use machine learning (ML) to detect TB …

Oliveai, Beckett Johnson, Alex Lewis, Ben Kummert

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Generative adversarial networks are being used to make original, AI generated content in many contexts, whether they are generating new works of art from a text description, or a completely fake person. Currently this technology is not being implemented in a way such that a user can practically interact with it in a way where users can actually use what is generated to improve their lives. We introduce OliveAI to explore a possible implementation of generative AI technology that users can practically and usefully interact with. OliveAI is a web app where users can provide a desired type of food …

Amber: Ai Music Based Emotion Regulation, Xavi Anderhub, Uma Bahl, Betty Hou, David Krakauer

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Music recommendations from apps are traditionally based on attributes like popularity or trendiness. While this method of recommending music may work for finding music in general, it does not address the granularity with which human emotions can change day to day, or even hour to hour. AMBER provides an accessible way to discover and listen to new music that matches one’s emotions in real time using the Spotify music platform and AI. Preliminary test results indicate that users found the music AMBER recommended to be more in line with the emotions they were feeling or wanted to feel. Future developments …

Learning With Your Buddies: An Investigation Of Community Based Ux Design Learning On Discord, Grace Ling

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Online communities have been a major part of how people connect with others to learn about different perspectives. In this thesis, I examine ways people use Discord, one of the major online community platforms, to learn UX design.

In this research, I designed a study, collected data from the Design Buddies Discord, and conducted semantic content analysis to investigate the community learners, job seekers, and mentors’ dialogues. I then used social network analysis to uncover patterns in connections. Lastly, I conducted a qualitative evaluation to survey and to understand the usefulness of Design Buddies.

The results show that a balance …

Machine Learning Fmri Autism Classifier, Nicholas Luckenbach

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is typically understood by observing patient behaviors. Advances in neuroimaging research and data collection have made it possible to investigate the neurobiological basis for ASD, and differences between subjects with ASD and healthy controls (HC) have been found using a variety of methods. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in particular has provided evidence for and against certain cognitive models of ASD based on measuring the functional connectivity of subjects’ brains. Various techniques have been explored for applying machine learning (ML) to fMRI data in order to find unique patterns and differences between ASD and HC subjects. …

Santé Le Match, Krizia Mae Araracap, Evan Chou, Matthew Isaac Tolosa

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In Senegal, many children are unaware of the importance of common hygiene practices due to limited health education on sanitation and personal hygiene. As a result, the repercussions of not following these practices are not clearly understood. This is an issue because some of the most common diseases in Senegal can be prevented through better sanitation practices and other basic preventative measures. Developing hygienic habits at a young age is critical—especially in a developing country such as Senegal. We have created a mobile application that educates and empowers children with the basic knowledge of WASH—water, sanitation, hygiene. Because Senegal often …

Personalized Memory Transfer For Conversational Recommendation Systems, Naga Archana Godavarthy

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Dialogue systems are becoming an increasingly common part of many users' daily routines. Natural language serves as a convenient interface to express our preferences with the underlying systems. In this work, we implement a full-fledged Conversational Recommendation System, mainly focusing on learning user preferences through online conversations. Compared to the traditional collaborative filtering setting where feedback is provided quantitatively, conversational users may only indicate their preferences at a high level with inexact item mentions in the form of natural language chit-chat. This makes it harder for the system to correctly interpret user intent and in turn provide useful recommendations to …

Applications For Nutrition Education In Developed And Developing Countries, Emma Allegrucci

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Food is vitally important for human beings. Without food, humanity would perish. Not only does food provide us with energy, but it also provides us with adequate nutrients so the systems throughout our body can function properly. Unfortunately, many people throughout the world, from top rated athletes to people living in impoverished areas, are either uninformed or do not have easy access to nutritional information or advice. There is a huge malnutrition epidemic among elite collegiate athletes and an even bigger malnutrition problem among the rural population of Uganda.

To solve the problem of malnourishment of collegiate athletes, I have …

Autonomous And Interactive Control Of A Mobile Robot, Dylan Hoover, Tanner Kaczmarek, Kevin Molumphy, Stephen Tambussi

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

An autonomous and interactive control of a mobile robot is a desired asset to the Robotics Systems Laboratory (RSL) at Santa Clara University and to the food automation company, L2F. This benefits their future endeavors of having helpful cobots navigate and assist entities in their respective environments. This paper documents the development of software for a cobot that satisfies the basic requirements for easy and safe control of an autonomous robot within a dynamic environment. The completed software includes the ability for the cobot to track a person and then autonomously follow that person around at a safe following distance …

Operating Machine Learning To Identify Tools (Omlit), Jason Chavez, Grant Schorr, Sebastian De La Cruz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Today’s society is heavily reliant on using data to improve systems and create innovative technology. This project takes advantage of artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning (ML) which has allowed us to create a web application that detects tools, specifically hand tools. By having the user upload an image of one of three hand tools (screw driver, handsaw, or power drill) the user will be able to identify the tool as well as be provided information on hand tool safety. This identification system is handled by a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model and trained using a self built data set. …

A Low-Cost, Long-Range, And Solar-Based Iot Soil Quality Monitor, Salvador Garcia, Trina Nguyen, Julian Wong

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The project objective is to create a low-cost, long-range, and solar-based IoT soil quality monitoring system. The system must transmit packages of data gathered from separate nodes, consisting of two dierent types of sensors, to a centralized gateway receiver to be displayed to the user in an elegant and readable manner. The end goal of the project is to supplement produce grown by large agricultural bodies around the United States without the misuse of water resources. This report presents the need for this system, details the components of the system, and the rationale behind design choices. It serves as a …

Full Body Image Animation With Deep Learning: A Review, Rachael Brooks

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Deepfake technology has been undoubtedly growing at a rapid pace since 2017. Particularly since using GAN architecture was popularized, research in this area has grown and seems to only be gaining momentum. One interesting area is animating images of full body humans using deep learning. This paper looks at the research done in this area and research that can influence it by looking at papers regarding human pose transfer, human motion transfer, and human motion generation. All of these types of papers have similar requirements, where a target pose must be abstracted to a skeleton and combined with appearance data …

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 …

Multi-Agents For Microgrids, Salem Al-Agtash, Nisrein Al-Mutlaq, Mohamed Elabbas, Asma Alkhraibat, Mohamad Al Hashem

Computer Science and Engineering

Microgrid systems are built to integrate a generation mix of solar and wind renewable energy resources that are generally intermittent in nature. This paper presents a novel decentralized multi-agent system to securely operate microgrids in real-time while maintaining generation, load balance. Agents provide a normal operation in a grid-connected mode and a contingency operation in an islanded mode for fault handling. Fault handling is especially critical in microgrid operation to simulate possible contingencies and microgrid outages in a real-world scenario. A robust agent design has been implemented using MATLAB-Simulink and Java Agent Development Framework technologies to simulate microgrids with load …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …