Senior design will have a total of four our five projects this year. Prof. Bolding will form the groups based on your project request form. Below are several possible projects for you to choose from. Turn in your project requests by Friday Sept. 30 at 11 AM.
You are asked to select projects you would like to work on in order to help the instructor form teams. Once the team is formed, it may choose to work on any project, including projects not on this list.
Autonomous Vehicle
Design and
build an
Autonomous Vehicle for the Sparkfun.com Autonomous Vehicle Competition (last
years competition). The competition usually takes place in late April in
Boulder, Co. The basic idea is to build a autonomous robot using a 1/10 scale
R/C car frame, GPS capabilities, as well as some kind of vision system. The
robot has to make it by it self around the Sparkfun warehouse while avoiding
obstacles and trying to make it through a loop for a time bonus. The fastest
time around the building wins $1000. Contact: Mike Jurasek
Foot-pedal
Controls for multiple Musical Instruments
Design and build a foot switch to integrate multiple instruments through a
single volume pedal and effects pedal and switch output based on input
selection. Contact: Prof. Lanning
Dispatchable Energy
Storage
New! Please see Prof. Roe's
video description of this
project.
There is an opportunity for SPU to participate in a project with Seattle City
Light, exploring the use of electrical vehicles as a form of "dispatchable
energy storage" that will enable accommodation of the intermittent nature of
renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar arrays, and perhaps
be part of the resources in neighborhood-based "picogrids" that can share
energy resources. I've coined the term "power parishes" for the latter
concept.
To address these topics, a team of SPU students would work with a collection
of SPU-owned and perhaps student or neighborhood electric vehicles, assessing
their usage patterns, battery charging history (both charging station and
battery health aspects). Seattle City Light may be able to make at least one
advanced charging station available at no (or very low) cost as part of this
endeavor. Potential renewable energy resources could be considered such as the
solar arrays on Otto Miller Hall, small run-of-the-river hydro-turbines, water
source heat pumps, sustainably-fueled fuel cells, waste-to-energy systems,
etc. In addition to the vehicle batteries, picogrid energy storage resources
could include battery banks, pumped water, heated water, etc. Self-powered
data capture, communication (secure), and interrogable data aggregation
systems would be incorporated, as well as modeling of the components / systems
in MATLAB (or similar software) as a means of exploring what-if scenarios,
multi-dimensional system optimization, etc. I anticipate it would be possible
to obtain loaned hardware / technical consultation assistance from a range of
local / regional sources, and perhaps pursue supplemental grants from
organizations such as the various power utilities, local industry, and WA
state. This could be a significant effort, and perhaps addressed by addressed
by several teams sharing the technical, project management, and coordination
responsibilities. Contact: Prof. Roe
Shaker Table Controller
Design and build a system to control a shaker table for a NIH laboratory. The
controller will automatically cycle the table on and off at a preset duty
cycle and duration. The controller will also control the temperature of the
samples in the shaker table. Contact: Emeritus Prof. Bob Hughson
Absorption Refrigerator - Design and build a solar powered absorption refrigerator for use in third world countries. Contact: Parker Barnett
Multi-Touch entertainment table - Design and build
a coffee-table sized tablet PC that uses a dedicated Windows (or Linux or Mac
based) system along with webcams, specialized software, and an optical system
called diffused surface illumination (DSI) to detect touch points from fingers
or objects and use it to control functions on the system without the use of a
keyboard or mouse. This system also has the potential to track facial
patterns. Contact: Sean Byrnes.
From Sean: I've got quite a lot of work done already on this table and plan
to finish it up before things get crazy at school. This type of thing has been
built before by quite a few people however i was thinking if others were
interested that with some additional features added this could be a very fun
senior project. A feature that could be interesting for a mechanical engineer
that I was thinking was for this table to be capable of rotating 90 degrees
electronically using an automated mechanical system. This would make the table
capable of also being a just a TV when you want it for watching or using with
other game systems.
Pantry Assist Robot - Design and build a robot arm that will help a person track and retrieve items from a food pantry. The system that understands your commands and recognizes what you're looking for in the pantry (maybe with an image scanner in its memory. You scan your stuff through it once). It can grab items for the user, as well as keep track of expirations dates. Contact: Chuyen Le
Sustainable Watering System - A water system that collects rain waters and waters your garden. It is powered by solar power, allows user to set up what time, how often and how much water to water your garden. It could have the scanner to check for bugs. Contact: Chuyen Le
Kevin Bolding September 29, 2011