VLSI and Circuits, Embedded and Hardware Systems Commons^™

Parking Information And Supervision System, Joshua A. Thum, Alex J. Kinch, Jacob A. Dye

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In densely populated areas, finding parking can be an arduous and time-consuming struggle, especially in large and tall parking decks. Drivers would benefit from a convenient way to find an open parking spot without having to scour the entire lot first. The goal of this project is to sense available parking spots in a parking garage or parking lot using physical object detection and visual detection with computer vision verification, and display the open spots to drivers entering the lot. This information will be displayed locally at the lot and in an app, with the latter allowing someone to see …

Printer For Music Box, Chad Lewis, Caleb Murawski, Zion Smith, Bryan Tibbs

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The traditional method of creating music box sheet music involves manually punching holes into a paper strip using a hand-operated hole punch. This process involves precise knowledge of each note’s location and the ability to achieve perfect accuracy for hours.

The goal of this system is to automate this process, significantly reducing the time required while greatly improving the accuracy of the resulting music box playback. The user simply uploads a MIDI file of their choice into a user-friendly application. Here, the file is modified based on the user’s needs and sent to an automated hole-punching system to punch the …

Dashboard And Racing Telemetry, Cole Barach, Jacob Koshel, Ethan Zifzal, Matthew Sullivan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The main goal of the project is to design and manufacture a combined dashboard and data logger for the vehicles produced by the Zips Racing design team. The dashboard will intuitively display real-time information to the driver and record all received information while driving. This information may be pulled off the device later for performing data analysis. This project will incorporate custom PCB design, surface mount soldering, embedded software development, and the CAN communication protocol.

Aquaflow Pro, Ashton Henley, Jeannie Fritz, Khalin Rubbo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Changing aquarium water is a hassle, and when done incorrectly, it will result in changes in water quality and potential harm to aquatic life. Aquarium water changes are crucial in removing toxins such as ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. There is a need for an automated, stressless fish tank water-changing solution that ensures aquatic safety. To this end, an automatic temperature-controlled fish tank water changing system was designed, carrying out a water change for a designated main tank in which water heated within an inbound reservoir is pumped into the tank to replace the outbound water, responding to both the tank’s …

Automatic Cat Caretaker, Connor Mcclenathan, Ryan Anderson, Andrew Tate

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will involve developing and constructing a self-cleaning litter box with feeding and watering functions attached. The machine will have a user interface for setting both the feeding and watering times, as well as how much to fill the food and water bowls at the same time. The project will involve the use of motors for the cleaning, feeding, and watering functions, sensors to detect when to perform those functions, and a microcontroller to process all the data and to tell the motors when to perform their respective functions. This project's goal is to make the task of caring …

Trace Flight Computer, Zachary Stratton, Vandad Mossavand Varkaneh, Nicholas Ely

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In the world of collegiate rocketry, there are currently no commercial-off-the-shelf flight computers capable of being fitted to liquid engine rockets with thrust vectoring control. Currently, amateur rocketeers utilize unreliable Arduino-based systems or expensive drone computers. The objective of this project is to design a flight computer capable of data collection and filtering, telemetry transmission, and real-time controls of critical safety systems using readily available commercial-off-the-shelf components to allow rocketeers to complete their designs within a reasonable budget. The system will collect data from two IMUs, a barometric altimeter, and a magnetometer, then filter the collected data using custom Kalman …

Autonomous Landscape Exploration Rover Using Imaging Surface Navigation (Alexis), Noah Jones, Dominic Salupo

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective is to develop a small-form-factor rover prototype that can be used to prove out a novel traversal method for use on extraterrestrial surfaces. The novel traversal method being proposed is LIDAR/CV-enhanced navigation, provided by a detachable flight vehicle that can communicate with the rover. On planets with thin atmospheres, cold gas thrusters or similar may be needed, but for the scope of this project more traditional flight/propulsion methods will be used.

Smart Longboard, Ben Rath

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The proposed design project includes a motorized longboard, equipped with a wireless handheld remote to manage the speed of the board. An embedded system mounted underneath the board will gather data from an accelerometer and a GPS sensor. This information is sent through a Bluetooth connection to a compatible smartphone application where it will be displayed. The project also includes a custom battery and charging circuit for the board to ensure that all of the engineering requirements are met. The board will be easy to use and the smartphone application will be able to display ride statistics of the user …

Safe Kids Car, Nathan Keenan, Jackson Piper, Kyle Law, Anthony Meniru

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The main goal of this project is to retrofit toy vehicles, such as Powerwheels cars, with safety systems that can protect the driver and those around the driver. Such systems will include lights, including headlights and taillights, and an automatic braking system, which will activate in the face of an inevitable collision. The system will also work with the driver to prevent collisions, providing warnings of impending danger.

Keywords: toy vehicles, collision detection, collision avoidance, automatic braking system, DC motors, automatic headlights.

Wireless Kick Pedal, Jacob Wise, Ryan Kinyo, Bradley Toth, Ian Zanath

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of the project is to build a wireless kick pedal that allows accessibility to drummers that have leg or foot disabilities and add versatility to multi-instrumentalists looking to add percussion while playing another instrument. The proposed pedal is designed in two main parts, a wearable band that tracks the player’s movement, and a hammer mechanism that receives actuation commands from the wearable band to move the hammer and deliver a drumbeat. The band is designed to be worn on several parts of the body, including the ankle, knee, thigh, or even the arm depending on the user’s situation. …

Wireless Environmental Weather Monitor, Joel Christie-Millett, Nathan Schroeder, Sylvester Wilson, Matthew Szijarto

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this senior design/honors project is to create a device that monitors environmental conditions in order to detect a wildfire. This device should notify a user of the status of the environment. The device should also last for 6 months without any human interaction. My role on the team is to design the power supply system that maximizes efficiency and uses renewable energy.

Autonomous Coffee Brewing System, Lillian Gonzalez, Landon Miller, Tyler Moff, Benjamin Vitu

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Coffee consumers want an affordable, high-quality cup of coffee that takes minimal time to brew and does not excessively contribute plastic to landfills. A fully autonomous system which utilizes whole coffee beans, water, and filters to brew coffee was designed to meet this need. This system accepts user requests which specify the brew’s portion size, water temperature, and brew strength, as well as the time which the system should begin the brewing process. Occasional maintenance to empty the system’s built-in waste receptacle or resupply the system with water, coffee beans, or filters is the only user intervention required. This report …

Smart Bike Aftermarket System (Sbams), Noah Lamadanie, Jack Bullock, Dawson Beachy, John Albrecht

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Smart Bike Aftermarket System will be a set of connected modules, which, when installed on a standard bicycle, will allow it to mimic some of the safety and quality-of-life functionalities of an E-bike. The most notable of these safety features is an ability to detect vehicles approaching from behind and alert the user of potential collisions. The system will also implement lighting (Headlights, taillights, and turn signals), and a coupled application so a user can view more advanced information about their cycling. The primary advantage of this system over a standard E-bike is that it will have a lower …

Hard Hat Ambient Liability Observer (Halo), Hunter Hykes, Nathan Kish, Brian Thomson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Capturing workplace incident information is a growing area of concern for most companies. To assist with this, the design team proposed the H.A.L.O. This design uses time-of-flight sensors connected to LEDs to create a proximity-based hazard warning system. It also records incident data using an accelerometer and micro-SD card. This helps workers avoid some of the most common workplace injuries, slips, trips, and falls and accidental collisions.

Students have created a design with engineering, and marketing requirements that accomplish this task. The proposed design allows for this monitoring and mitigation systems to be attached to hard hats. Team members developed …

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

Soil Sensor Network, Andrea Wyder, Ross Klonowski, Alexis Alves, Luke Farnsworth

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Water management during crop irrigation is a problem for the agricultural industry. To help farmers better maintain water usage, a wireless soil sensor network comprised of a sensor pod and wireless communication has been designed and implemented. It was proven that the sensor pod can be installed 6-8 inches below the ground and communicate up to at least a 6km distance back to the gateway. The senor pod shells have a 2 mm thick shell to prevent the pod from shattering when coming into contact with the ground after being released from the planter, as calculated through the force of …

Smart Doggy Door, Jaret Helminski, Brandon Caldwell, Jason Marcum, Nathaniel Hall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The smart doggy door is an engineering senior design project which will be completed in the spring of 2021. The goal of this project is to design and implement a dog door that can detect when a dog is near. After that it will determine if the dog is allowed to use the door and it will then open if the dog is allowed to go through the door. This device will also send a notification to the dogs owner via an app on their phone. This device will allow dog owners to keep unwanted animals out as well as …

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.

E-Z Door: Hands-Free Front Door Unlocking And Opening Mechanism, Caleb Dyck

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The E-Z Door Senior Design project is a project with the aim of designing a hands-free system to unlock and open the front door of a home using two-factor security authentication.

The main goal of this project is to help people who may have physical limitations to be able to take advantage of recent technology, making it significantly easier to enter their homes.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Autonomous Uav Battery Swapping, Reed Jacobsen, Nikolai Ruhe, Nathan Dornback

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

One of the main hindrances of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology are power constraints. One way to alleviate some power constraints would be for two UAVs to exchange batteries while both are in flight. Autonomous mid-air battery swapping will expand the scope of UAV technology by allowing for indefinite flight times and longer missions. A single board computer will control each UAV’s flight software to respond to inputs to align with each other mid-flight. When the two UAVs have joined, mechanical components will exchange a depleted battery on the worker UAV for a freshly charged battery that belongs to the …

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 …

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. …

Free-Range Pre-Programmed Rc Car, Alexander L. Aubihl, Andrew S. Hopwood, Benjamin J. Riggs, Tyler P. Vance

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

There is a growing interest in the capabilities and utilization of autonomous vehicles. The objective of this project is to design a small scale illustration of an autonomous vehicle driven by user input. An application will be designed that will allow a user to create a track that an RC car will accurately follow. As the car follows the track, a microcontroller on the vehicle will send movement information back to the application. This information is used by the application to process where the vehicle is currently at and where it needs to go. While in motion, on-board sensors will …