EECS 398 & EECS 399

Senior Project I & II

Potential Projects

We anticipate additional projects relating to the mini-BAJA project and from other faculty/sponsors. You are not limited to this list and it is only meant to help you in your final choice of project.

• eParcel
  

  The e-parcel is an e-mail-like system capable of sending attachments of arbitrarily large size. This semester-long project will ask you to design and implement an e-parcel system. The main purpose of this description is to give a high level overview of e-parcel and of the design and implementation process.

  Here's how e-parcel works: If Alice wishes to send a 700MB MPEG file to Bob, Alice launches e-parcel, attaches the file, fills in Bob's regular e-mail address, and clicks send. That's it: same as plain old e-mail. Bob's e-parcel client beeps and shows a short notice asking Bob whether he wishes to accept delivery of Alice's 700MB video (and a warning Bob not to accept delivery if he does not have enough disk space). Bob accepts delivery. (If Bob declined delivery, Alice would be notified by e-parcel, and no attachment is delivered.) After the transmission is complete, Bob receives a second notification with a link to a file on the disk of Bob's own machine. When Bob clicks the link, the video starts playing.
  (Contact Prof. Liberatore, vincenzo.liberatore@case.edu)

• Golf Cart Controller
  

  System analysis and controller redesign for an electric golf cart: A Case alum has designed an electric golf cart that is being used successfully. Improvements are desired. An overall analysis of the drive system is desired, included battery voltage and current constraints, PWM controller constraints, dc motor constraints, and the influence of these on hill-climbing, top speed on level ground, and battery life. Additionally, the existing controller is overly large and heavy. The electronic controller should be redesigned to reduce size and weight without sacrificing performance.
  (Contact Prof. Newman, wsn@case.edu)

• Cryogenic waveplate actuator design
  

  Our physics department is engaged in experiments conducted in high-altitude balloons and at the South Pole to measure cosmic microwave background radiation. The latest instrument design requires a motor and bearing means to operate at cryogenic temperatures (about 4K) that will drive a large optical plate (30cm diameter) at a steady rotation rate near 10Hz. An electromagnetic motor-drive design should be proposed and mocked up for characterization. Additionally, bearing alternatives (including magnetic suspension) should be reviewed and proposed, with experiments to validate the proposed approach. This review should include evaluation of existing passive superconducting magnetic suspension means.
  (Contact Prof. Newman, wsn@case.edu)

• Cell Phone Medical Monitor
  

  There has been much development of telemedical monitoring by which a nurse or doctor can remotely examine a patient (visually, blood pressure, electronic stethosscope, and other similar simple tests using two computers and the Internet. The problem is that many patients do not have computers and do not know how to use a computer (hence there is a psychological barrier to using a computer). We would like to develop a similar approach which would let a doctor or nurse examine a patient via a cell phone. This requires development of software for data acquisition, event monitoring (in the event that we want to alert the doctor or nurse if something abruptly changes in the patient), visual examination, etc. It is anticipated that the doctor or nurse's software would run on a PC allowing recording of the conversation and any medical data. This project would require examination of existing cell phones, specification of appropriate communciations and control protocols, and software development. Many of the more sophisticated cell phones use a real-time linux and we anticipate that we will probably want to use such a programmable phone.
  (Contact Prof. Merat, flm@case.edu) or Prof. Cavusoglu (cenk.cavusoglu@case.edu)

• Rehabilative robotics, computer games, and more
  

  There are a number of opportunities for students to work in software development, robotics, EEG signal acquisition and signal processing, etc. at the Vetran's Administration Hospital. Previous projects have worked with computer software for rehabilative therapy. In this process the arms of patients needing rehabilitation have been attached to robots which then interact with them to exercise the appropriate muscles. The user interface looks like a computer game. In one example, the patient operates his arms to make a computer cursor track a path drawn on the screen and gets points for how accurately and quickly he can follow the computer drawn path. (Contact Dr. Janis Daly, jjd17@cwru.edu)

• Modern Ignition Tuning Tool for Ford Model T

  The Ford Model T is one of the most significant automobiles ever designed. It was produced from 1908 through 1927 with over ? million produced. With so many produced, the Model T remains today as a popular and affordable antique car for collectors and enthusiasts. It is estimated that over ? are still in driving condition today. There are 2 major international and national clubs dedicated to the Model T each with hundreds of local chapters. There are at least 6 major Model T parts suppliers today offering a wide variety of reproduction parts allowing these cars to be safely driven into their second hundred years. The Model T ignition system, essentially unchanged during the entire production run, is unlike those found on modern cars. It consists of a 6V battery and/or hand crank for initial engine start. After engine start or while hand cranking, low voltage power is generated by a magneto (flywheel with rotating magnets and fixed coils), which produces an AC current of varying frequency and voltage. 4 independent coil/capacitor/vibrator assemblies use this current to produce a high voltage current for each of the T’s 4 spark plugs. The Model T runs great when the magneto and coils are adjusted and tuned correctly. When not properly tuned, you’ll wonder why you ever bought one of these cars.

  As a Model T owner who has struggled with the ignition system, I feel I can offer a good set of requirements for an ignition tuning tool. Of course, the devil is in the details: Computer control: The tool should be controlled entirely from a USB equipped computer. This would allow for display and set of tuning parameters through a typical Windows UI. Additionally, plots of magneto output voltage and spark timing data would be available. The tool must be able to connect to a Model T to collect data and plots on the actual magneto output of the car in real time. This data will be used for diagnosis of magneto functionality as well as being used to simulate low voltage generated to allow adjustment of a coil unit. A canned “factory correct” magneto output data set should also be available for use without a running Model T (very typical in the restoration community). The tool must evaluate several aspects of a connected coil unit. These include evaluation of internal connections, primary coil winding, secondary coil winding, and capacitor. The tool must display in real time the actual voltage being sent to a coil unit for tuning and the current drawn by the coil. This must be variable by the operator to simulate varying engine RPM. Spark produced by the coil unit must be measured and displayed in time with the current produced by the simulated magneto. The system should diagnose “double sparking”. A mechanical component to hold a coil and allow adjustment of the vibrator points for current draw is necessary. Some parameters that must be measured and displayed by the tool include:

  • Battery voltage
  • RPM
  • Magneto voltage
  • Generator voltage
  • Primary coil resistance
  • Secondary coil resistance
  • Capacitance value
  • Coil current draw
  • Coil output voltage
  • Spark timing
  • The tool must function in a garage environment.
  • The tool must function in the electromagnetic nightmare created by the Model T electrical system without damage to itself or the host computer.
  • Target a manufactured price of under $150.

  (Contact Mr. Ken Foster, kenneth.foster@philips.com)

• PDA Software and Database for Electronic Stimulator Bandage Research Project
  

  Chronic wounds, including pressure ulcers, are a significant problem for many individuals with reduced mobility and poor blood flow. This devastating condition occurs at a high rate and eleven years ago the cost to treat pressure sores in the USA was estimated to be in excess of $1.33 billion per annum. Dr. Kath Bogie of the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center (Cleveland FESC) is investigating the use of electrical stimulation to help heal pressure ulcers faster. A flexible electronic bandage is being developed to deliver short, controlled pulses of current to the affected part of the body.

  The bandage is equipped with an IrDA infrared link to communicate with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) such as Palm Pilots. This link will allow the physician or researcher to modify the tissue stimulation parameters and retrieve sensor data without making a physical connection to the bandage itself. This method is more sterile and reliable than a conventional wired connection and makes use of existing technology that is in widespread use today.

  The purpose of this senior project is to develop a PDA software tool to communicate with the electronic bandage and a PC-based database for managing test data and performing some basic data analysis. The group should start their project by developing a set of software specifications based on communication with the Principal Investigator and Graduate Researcher. The group selecting this project should have at least one member with skills in the areas of Visual Studio.net programming and database programming. .

  Budget/ Materials: All equipment and materials will be provided as necessary. An electronic bandage prototype will be supplied to assist in the development of the communication link. A PDA and any necessary development tools will also be supplied.

  Project Deliverables and Expectations: The project deliverables can be divided into three main tasks: 1) PDA Hardware/Software: develop IrDA communication link and protocol 2) PDA Software: provides user interface to bandage; plots discharge waveforms 3) PC Software: maintains clinical study database and provides statistical analysis tools

  A final presentation to researchers and software training will also be required. Each software program should be sufficiently documented so that it may be operated by a researcher and easily modified by a programmer, if necessary.

  Your group has the opportunity to make a significant contribution to an active research project that has the potential to alleviate the suffering of thousands of people annually. In order for the research project to stay on schedule, it is very important that this senior project be completed successfully. Please select this project only if your group is willing to put in the time and effort necessary to deliver an outstanding product.
  (Contact Prof. Steve Garverick, slg9@case.edu, or Mr.Dan Howe, daniel.howe@case.edu)

• NASA Space Based Internet Networks: Intelligent Robots, Networks, & Emulation
  

  This project is based on the ongoing work of a team of students at CWRU; several undergrad and graduate students will be supporting the activities. This project develops distributed protocols and systems for agile, interactive, and intelligent routers for telecommunication systems considering earth, satellite, aircraft, and space-based internet. The project concentrates on the technical capabilities that are currently emerging due to the advances in the backbone network and interspace satellites, aircraft, and spacecraft. In this context, a class of network protocols and systems consistent with existing hardware and software technologies will be developed. The design and development of the foundation for re-configurable networks uses autonomous and remote units (agents). This project will create new models to improve agility, flexibility, and high rate transmission for tele-communication systems.
  (Contact Prof. Malakooti, Behnam Malakooti <bxm4@po.cwru.edu>)

• Network Simulation--Autonomous Intelligent decision making and Types: With application to Intelligent Mobile Agents for Tele-Communications. Network Routing (for NASA)
  

  A system for building intelligent decision makers with emotional intelligence is being developed. This project is based on the ongoing work of a team of students at CWRU; several undergrad and graduate students will be supporting the activities.

  Problem definition: Network Routing is becoming a challenging job for routers since network sizes are growing exponentially. Currently the routers use Dijkstra or Bellman-ford algorithm to calculate the routing table, which instructs the route of the incoming packet. Using current routing techniques, high traffic and delays are common. With traditional methods, it is becoming increasingly difficult for routers to get real-time and accurate information of the network topology. New technologies must be found to help the network explore and exchange information.

  Intelligent Mobile Agent: A Mobile Agent is a piece of a program that travels though the network. It can get information from one part of the network and send it to another part of the network. The Intelligent Mobile Agent is a kind of Mobile Agent that can learn from the train that it passes and monitors the route it should travel. Since the Mobile Agent is small and self-controlled, it greatly reduces the burden on the network and the network nodes.

  Proposed work: We are going to define the structure of the intelligent mobile agent. The mobile agent is currently in use but most of the mobile agents are passive. We will extend and improve the structure of some of the mobile agent to make our mobile agent more capable. We are going to write some simulations to test and verify our system.
  (Contact Prof. Malakooti, Behnam Malakooti <bxm4@po.cwru.edu>)

• ATA over Ethernet
  

  This is for a local company and represents a very low-level SAN solution, embedding disk drive ATA commands and data blocks in Ethernet frames. It is Ethernet level only - no IP or anything, but that's fine since it is intended for local storage - routing and such are not needed. Basically, you can create network devices that look like unix block devices. You can then do straight-forward filesystems and such over the network, or do software based RAIDs. With gigabit Ethernet so cheap now, it can be pretty fast and cheap. No fiber channel expense or the expense/complexity of iSCSI. We have an embedded PPC processor board that might be a good fit for making an ATA over Ethernet device. The project would be to implement the protocol on this board. The standard is only 8 pages long, so the bulk of the work would be in the embedded device drivers. A better implementation would be to do this on an FPGA but that is for a future project - there are open cores available for both the Ethernet MAC and the ATA controller. That would require someone that is pretty familiar with VHDL or Verilog. Here's a link to the protocol: http://www.coraid.com/documents/AoEr8.txt
  (Contact Nick Barendt, nickbarendt@gmail.com)

• Water level sensor
  

  We have been working for several semesters on a device which can be attached to the existing water level sight class of a commercial furnace or boiler. We have used a Motorola MC33791 e-field sensor to capacitely sense the level of water in tubes, and have independently used a microprocessor to send messages through an attached modem to one of the cell phone providers. The messages are sent using the TAPS protocol. The project still needs a lot of work. The hardware has never been completely integrated onto one printed circuit board and the design of a printed circuit implementation needs to be done. In addition to the hardware aspects, the software for the integrated system needs to be designed and implemented. This software would need to be able to process signals from the capacitive sensors and has both calibration and signal processing requirements. Finally, the current capacitive sensing method has limitations and we may need to research other sensors and design experiments to test their effectiveness.
  (Contact Prof. Merat, EECS)

• Wireless Networked Gun Target Actuation System
  

  A need exists for the development of wireless networked target actuation system such as is used for shooter training and practice. The actuator would be required to rotate a target 90° from a horizontal orientation to a vertical orientation for a pre-programmed period of time and then return the target to its initial position. The system must also be able to sense the impact of the round and drop the target when the target is struck. The system should be able to support a minimum of 10 actuators that can be accessed from a computer (preferably a laptop) over a wireless network (preferably 802.11 compliant). The system should be able to operate over a maximum distance of 300 yards from the base station to the furthest actuator. It is envisioned that the actuators would be laid out on the shooting range at distances from 5 to 300 yards from the firing point. The software would recognize the actuators and assign each an ID that would appear on the computer display. The user would then program the actuators for the amount of exposure time and hide time for each target and the total number of target exposures. These times are typically on the order of 5 seconds. The actuators would themselves require an on-board microprocessor to control the actuation mechanism, arbitrate communications and keep track of scoring. Scoring can performed in one of two modes. Mode 1 would score solely based on the number target impacts. Mode 2 would score using a time/distance based bias method in that the maximum point score can be obtained only within the first 2 seconds of exposure and decreasing thereafter until the target drops at the end of the exposure period. In addition, the software would allow the targets to be configured such that certain targets can be assigned a higher point score, such as those at further distances. The actuators must be designed to operate from a battery, and the design should be such that it maximizes operational time between battery recharges. The actuators must able to operate for a minimum of 100 actuations over a time period of five hours.

  This project would concentrate upon the development of a target impact sensing mechanism, implementation of the wireless networking, software development for both the remote actuators as well as the base station. It is anticipated that a significant portion of the project can be implemented with commercial off the shelf (COTS) components.

  (Contact Mr. Mark Podany, mpodany@pgmdi.com)
  

• Adso the Librarian
  

  This is a project for a local start-up company. There are numerous software packages for the management of digital photos (e.g., Apple iPhoto, Adobe Photoshop Album, iView Media Pro, etc.) There is, however, currently no robust cross-platform software available for the management of scanned files and images, and other user-created/user-acquired (UCUA) documents.

  A functional prototype database has been developed to perform simple search routines to locate UCUA journal articles, and searches can be performed by Author, by Journal, by Year, by Keyword, etc. The user was responsible for hand-coding this bibliographic information into the database, and linking this information to the electronic file. Adobe Acrobat Forms was used to re-capture this bibliographic information, and attach it to the electronic file. This functional prototype was developed in 4D for the Apple Gx platform.

  This functional prototype needs fundamental and evolutionary enhancements. The company desires the following tasks: (1) evaluation of similar/competitive products, identifying strengths and weaknesses; (2) improved search capabilities, possibly including GREP-style features; (3) data import/export capability; (4) duplicate entry management and internal data synchronization; (5) improved GUI (company will assist/develop/provide artwork to support); (6) streamlined data entry process; (7) cross-platform support (MAC/PC); (8) document preview; and (9) interface to other databases (e.g., Lexis-Nexis, SilverPlatter, etc.).

  This will be a classic "real-world" design engineering project, with project management, design plan and schedule, design specifications, design activities and design reviews, design verification, design validation, and design documentation. The company seeks excellence in design and design documentation.

  (Contact James J. Rogers, Coastal Consulting Group, Ltd. coastalcg@earthlink.net)