Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Electronic Locking Mechanism, Nicholas Tamburrino

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The electronic locking mechanism project will include an Arduino microcontroller to control inputs and outputs such as a keypad, an RFID reader, a stepper motor, and an LCD screen. The keypad and RFID reader will be used to verify the authorization for anyone coming through the locked door, the stepper motor will be used to physically lock and unlock the door, and the LCD screen will display the state of the locking mechanism.

Design Project: Smart Headband, John Michel, Jack Durkin, Noah Lewis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Concussion in sports is a prevalent medical issue. It can be difficult for medical professionals to diagnose concussions. With the fast pace nature of many sports, and the damaging effects of concussions, it is important that any concussion risks are assessed immediately. There is a growing trend of wearable technology that collects data such as steps and provides the wearer with in-depth information regarding their performance. The Smart Headband project created a wearable that can record impact data and provide the wearer with a detailed analysis on their risk of sustaining a concussion. The Smart Headband uses accelerometers and gyroscopes …

Automated Blind Control, Daniel Nahra, Matthew Lacek, Timothy Kurczewski, William Daulton Baksa

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this project would be to design and prototype an automated, light and temperature sensing window blinds system. The device would detect temperature, both inside and outside, and incoming sunlight to determine proper window blind position for maximum energy savings. The user would also have the ability to change the settings of the blind from a remote device to a setting that they desire at any given time

Investigation Of Surface Charge Using Faraday Bucket Measurements: Analysis On Electrospun Polyvinylidene Fluoride Fiber Mats, Ryan Kantenwein

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Piezoelectric polymer materials such as polyvinylidene fluoride exhibit beneficial properties for use in personal protective equipment (PPE) against viral contaminants and other foreign microparticles. The electrospinning process of this material allows for surface charge to develop over a controlled surface area. Kynar 761 at 10 wt% demonstrates increased surface charge after withstanding a flow of aerated NaCl particles from a TSI 8130 instrument. Utilizing voltage measurements from a Faraday bucket, 18 wt% Kynar 761 and MG-15 exhibit surface charge when undergoing an electrospinning process; however, Kynar MG-15 displays lower charge values than that of Kynar 761. Several critical factors such …

Door Barricade, Alex Cerino

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

My senior capstone project will be a door barricade. The main idea for the use of the door barricade is for schools in the case of an intruder. The barricade that I will be designing is a solution to the inefficient barricades that I saw at my high school. It could also be used at businesses and homes. My design would be easy to use and have a fail-safe option. The two areas of mechanical engineering technology that my capstone project will focus on are stress analysis and electronics. Every part for my door barricade is drawn in SolidWorks. All …

Light Loaded Automated Guided Vehicle, Marcus Radtka, Nazar Paramashchuk, Lawrence Shevock

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of the locomotion system was to design and implement the mechanical, electrical, and software related functions to ensure the LLAGV had the capability of maneuvering its surroundings. The LLAGV’s motors were represented in an open loop transfer function to utilize RPM feedback and a compensator when needed. The modeled compensator helped control the LLAGV’s speed and acceleration, enabling further control of the LLAGV. The internal circuitry has the means to properly distributed power to all components and allowed the user to control the LLAGV to their desire. The application software within the LLAGV locomotion system (LLAGV-LS) had consideration …

Obstructive Wiring Patterns To Circular Planarity In Electrical Networks, Hannah Lebo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In order for an electrical network to be printed on a flat surface without changing the network’s input or output, it is important to consider if any wires will cross and if this problem can be avoided. If a circular network can be printed so that no wires cross, the network is said to be circular planar. In this paper, we identify a number of wiring patterns that make circular planarity impossible. We find exactly 3 wiring patterns using circular pairs with sets of two nodes, and we find exactly 78 wiring patterns using circular pairs with sets of three …

Developing A Uas-Deployable Methane Sensor Using Low-Cost Modular Open-Source Components, Gavin Demali

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project aimed to develop a methane sensor for deployment on an unmanned aerial system (UAS), or drone, platform. This design is centered around low cost, commercially available modular hardware components and open source software libraries. Once successfully developed, this system was deployed at the Bath Nature Preserve in Bath Township, Summit County Ohio in order to detect any potential on site fugitive methane emissions in the vicinity of the oil and gas infrastructure present. The deliverables of this project (i.e. the data collected at BNP) will be given to the land managers there to better inform future management and …

Zips Racing Electric Can Communications, Andrew Jordan, Adam Long, Susanah Kowalewski, Rami Nehme

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The CAN protocol has been a standard of electronic communication networks of automotive vehicles since the early 2000s due to its robust reliability in harsh environments. For the 2020 competition year, the Zips Racing Electric design team will be building an entirely new, fully-electric vehicle with CAN communication implemented rather than communicating via pure analog signals. Hardware and software can be utilized to read analog electrical signals from a source, such as accelerator and brake sensors, and encode them into a digital message that meets the CAN 2.0B communication protocol standard. Likewise, software can be used to extract data from …

Kettlebell Ultra, Elissa Peters, Kathryn Wegman, Daniel Basch, Mason Pastorius

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will consist of an attachment to an average kettlebell that will track the number of repetitions that the user has performed. The device will send this data over Bluetooth to a smart phone application so the user can track their workout accurately.

Digital, Automated Reactive Target System, Nicholas Haas, Saipranay Vellala, Trandon Ware, Thomas Martin

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this era, technology is woven into almost every facet of our leisure activities. Although technology has innovated hobbies ranging from chess to soccer, the art of shooting has been neglected. Unnecessary insufficiency such as bullet ricochets off of mechanical steel targets, ineffective progress tracking, and general inaccessibility to outdoor training facilities are all improvable areas of this sport. The Dynamic Automated Reactive Target (D.A.R.T) System aims to fill some of these gaps and help modernize recreational marksmanship. Modeling the system after a dueling tree will optimize the use of the system and allow for different training models to challenge …

Smart Collar, Gretchen T. Woodling, Sean Moran, Justen Bischoff, Jacob Sindelar

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Smart Collar is a universal pet tracker, designed to be small and exceedingly comfortable for any pet to wear. GPS technology is used to locate the device, allowing the user to track their pet, via a smart phone application. This application can be used to program the device, view maps of their pet’s location and history of travel. Operating primarily on Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) for data transfer, the device consumes very little power, allowing for several days of run-time per charge of the battery. Boasting no monthly service fees, The Smart Collar provides pet owner’s an …

Bitbilliards, Grant Reinbolt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of the project is to create a billiards table capable of keeping track of the score while simultaneously racking the sunk balls under the table. To achieve this, image processing will be utilized to detect and determine which balls are above and below the table. Upon leaving the table, the balls will be held by gates to prevent the cue ball from entering the re-racking track. The balls will then enter the track and form a queue to be placed back into the triangle underneath the table. A gantry system consisting of an x and y axis will …

Automatic Range Finding Bow Sight, Garrett Gill, Dillon Denny, Cory Verba

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

With the growing popularity of archery, a system designed to help an archer achieve the best shot possible becomes necessary. The Automatic Range Finding Bow Sight is a system that consists of a single pin sight controlled by a servo motor. The servo motor controls the sight pin by rotating a drive wheel that will move the pin up or down. The sight pin movement is based on a reading obtained by a built-in rangefinder and speed data input by the user. This data will then be compared to programmed lookup tables in order to find the appropriate pin position. …

Autonomous Combat Robot, Andrew J. Szabo Ii, Chris Heldman, Tristin Weber, Tanya Tebcherani, Holden Leblanc, Fabian Ardeljan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This honors project will also serve as an engineering senior design project.

The objective is to design and build the software and electrical systems for a 60 lb weight class combat robot that will function autonomously and outperform manually driven robots during competition.

While running autonomously, the robot will use LiDAR sensors to detect and attack opponent robots. This robot will also be able to be remote controlled in manual mode. This will mitigate the risk in case the autonomy or sensors fail. LED lights on the robot will indicate whether it is in autonomous or manual mode. The system …

Smart Garage Opener, Jacob Wasson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this research project was to design an anti-theft device that interfaces with a standard garage door opener to allow packages to easily be delivered into a garage in a safe and secure manner. Primary functionality of the device is to use a package’s tracking number and corresponding barcode to open and close a garage door to a preset height so that a package can be delivered inside the garage before it closes. My contribution to the project revolved around the programming and board design of the microcontroller circuit that controls the input and output signals of the …

Safe Pass, Alycia Riese, Julia Hariharan, Greg Synek, Jonathan Hall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to design a sensor to be mounted on Class IV and higher vehicles to detect on-coming traffic. If traffic has been detected, the system is to warn drivers behind the stopped vehicle that passing is unsafe. The vehicle detection is to be implemented using a LiDAR detection method along with signal processing. A wireless transceiver is to transmit from the front radar module to the rear warning indicator module when the conditions are unsafe for passing. The project goals are to increase road safety and maintain traffic flow. The report details the challenges due …

Cycle Assist, Tyler Matthews

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The senior engineering design project presented in the paper that succeeds this, outlines the steps taken to design and implement an electronic bicycle that is able to keep a user’s heart-rate in a selected “intensity zone” though the use of an electronic motor and custom control circuitry. My portion of this project was to allow for safe and consistent power delivery to the rest of the electronics. That is to say, I built a battery pack and battery management system (BMS) to safely supply sufficient power to the rest of the electronics that were required for this project. In order …

S.A.V.E. M.E., Taylor Davis, Kelly Nicole O'Neill, Adrianna M. Dunlap, Parsa Esshaghi Bayat

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

S.A.V.E. M.E. stands for Submerged Automated Vehicular Elevation Minor Extraction or alternatively a Home Swimming Pool Rescue Device. The objective of this project is to design and prototype a system that will make unattended swimming pools through detecting a victim’s presence, deploying a means to save the victim, and alerting others nearby of the situation. This system encompasses sensors and devices within the pool and an alarm system outside of the pool. Upon detection of a sufficiently sized object entering the pool when the system is armed, a device will maneuver to the victim and deploy a flotation device that …

Ball Oscillating Bouncer, Eric Blok, Daniel Altemese, Ryan Nowacki, Maram Qurban

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this report is to document the need, objectives, marketing and engineering requirements, as well as validate the design of an autonomous control device capable of continuously bouncing a table tennis ball on a paddle. This includes the design of a self correcting system using lightweight materials, and as few sensors and components as possible to achieve a compact, portable design. To accomplish this, the system is designed to react to a ball falling from as short a distance as 10 centimeters above the paddle, meaning all sensor processing, control processing, and motor drives should be able to …

Soil Moisture Sensor, Jaclyn Miller, Derek Bitecofer, Seung Jun Lee

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Since water is an important resource and not all communities around the world can afford to be liberal with their water needs; it has become important to use available water as efficiently as possible, especially in agriculture. For the purpose of reducing the overwatering of crops, an unattended ground moisture sensor can be implemented to measure the moisture level in the soil surrounding the plants. This will allow a farmer to know when to water or stop watering crops. For convenience, the moisture data information should be transmitted wirelessly to the user. The design of an unattended ground moisture sensor …

Smart Fitness Machine, Tyler M. Masters

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper details the design of a smart fitness machine that, by the use of sensors and a central micro controller, tracks an individual users exercise performance data and provides a platform for the data to be easily accessed either by the trainer or user.

Stringless Guitar, Kue Z. Yang, Anthony Batey, Dominic Mercorelli, Nathaniel Hawk

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The aim of this project is to improve the design of a typical guitar by designing a digital stringless guitar. Due to the nonlinearities inherent in a guitar, it would be difficult to reproduce guitar tones by summing harmonic components; therefore, digital samples of guitar tones were taken in order to preserve these unique and wonderfully sounding tones. These digital samples were stored in the guitar and used to produce its tones when played. The digital guitar includes fingerboard position sensors as well as strum sensors for each string. The fingerboard position sensors detect the player’s fingers at discrete positions. …

Underwater Robot, Joseph E. Beck, Matthew Crislip, Cody Bobek, Peyton Lucas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are remote controlled drones operated by a non-local user. The ROV we plan to build is connected by a tethering wire to a floating buoy that contains an antenna which will send signals between the base station and the ROV. The ROV is equipped with a video camera, ballast system, propulsion system, lights, and a depth sensor. The ROV will transmit a live video feed to the user, while receiving input signals to control its movement from the base station.

Packmule, Jared M. Alexander, Jared J. Ford, Timothy J. Griffiths, Andray Pennington

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

People face demands of hauling equipment and belongings with them every day, whether it be for work or leisure. This design report discusses and details a product that would allow people to overcome the struggles of this. The Packmule is an autonomous following robot that has the capability of carrying a load up to 30 pounds. The design involves two independently controlled motors operating two drive wheels so that the Packmule will be flexible in the directions it can move. There are also two more steering wheels for support of the base and the load inside. The way in which …

Analysis Of Sensor Coil Implemented In Maxwell-Wien Bridge Circuit For Detecting Ferrous And Non-Ferrous Particles, Kue Z. Yang, Robert J. Veillette, Joan E. Carletta

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Research

This paper presents an analysis of a wear debris sensor coil implemented in a Maxwell-Wien Bridge circuit used in detecting ferrous and non-ferrous particles. The sensor coil is designed to have a diameter approximately 15 times larger than the largest particle being detected. To detect particles up to 2 mm in diameter, a coil 30 mm in diameter was constructed. Simulations of the experiment indicate that the available particles should be detectable by the sensor coil. However, experimental results indicate that the Maxwell-Wien Bridge does not detect the available particles. Further simulations are presented accounting for parasitic capacitance of the …

Titan Wireless Camera Control System, Matthew J. Trowbridge, Ian Drake, Samuel Davis, Ognjen Krco

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Titan Camera Control System is an eletromechanical device that allows the user to wirelessly control a camera’s digital operations as well as physical orientation through the use of a mobile device application. The Titan system accepts input in the form of virtual user commands on the mobile app and performs system output in the form of sending photos/video from the camera back to the app as well as changing the orientation of the camera in accordance with the user’s commands.

Roobockey "Autonomous Hockey Robot", Keith R. Martin, Troy W. Bowers, Deboshri Sadhukhan, John A. Supel

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of the ROOBockey project is to design and construct a floor hockey robot that can competitively shoot a puck. The robot design quickly locates a specific beacon through the use of image processing and uses a pneumatic shooting mechanism to send a puck to a specified target. The beacons act as possible player or goal positions in a hockey game. The robot also utilizes a wireless controller device to allow a user to maneuver the robot across a hockey field.

Disc Golf Locator, Christian Wallenfelsz, Shane Gamble, Noah Sanor, Brandon Linhart

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research

Disc golf is a game similar to traditional golf where players throw small plastic discs into chain-link nets. Disc golf courses cover several acres containing lakes, small wooded areas, large bushes, and grassy fields. It is not uncommon to accidentally throw a golf disc into the woods or bushes, so it is the goal of this project to create a device to locate the disc and make suggestions for the player to improve performance. A small device will be attached the disc which will track its location and flight characteristics. The device will contain a GPS receiver, an inertial measurement …

Monitoring System For Electric Motors, Sean Waples

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Induction motors are key to many applications and are one of the most commonly used electric devices. Currently, induction motor fault detection schemes are limited in features and computational power. With current technology, fault detection algorithms are operating in embedded systems and run on embedded processors. These processors do not have the computation power and functionality that more advanced computer systems have, which is the source of the issue. With the recent rise in cloud computing and connected devices, it is possible to build an induction motor monitoring system with a much greater set of features and possibilities.