Senior Design

Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Description: The Senior Capstone Project, titled "The Walks Outdoor GPS Tracking Software Application," seeks to address the significant risk faced by around 2000 hikers annually, who get lost or face injuries during their outdoor activities in areas beyond cell phone coverage. This proof-of-concept project aims to enhance outdoor safety through the development of an integrated platform. This platform will incorporate continuous GPS tracking, personalized alert systems, and other planning tools, functioning even in areas lacking cell phone reception. It will enable users to amalgamate location data from various GPS tracking devices, track routes, set geo-fencing points, manage notifications, and handle other related data to facilitate safe and organized trip planning.

Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Description: The Senior Capstone Project, "Jamr," is designed to address the challenges encountered by participants of game jams on the Itch.io platform, specifically in aspects of team formation and project management. Currently, each jam on the platform is hosted by varied sponsors or communities, resulting in a lack of standardized protocols for efficient collaboration and project management. This issue, coupled with time constraints imposed by jams, significantly impedes the game development process.

"Jamr" aims to revolutionize this experience by allowing users to not only swiftly find team members with diverse skills but also manage the entire game project within a single application, optimizing the game design process within the short jam duration. The application will incorporate itch.io’s OAuth for profile access, displaying users' experience, skills, and past jam scores. Users can modify their profiles, initiate projects visible to potential contributors, and sift through applicants based on their skills for team formation.

The application will feature a dedicated project dashboard for each project, accessible by all team members, facilitating comprehensive project management. The dashboard will include a shared calendar, a central assets module for uploading game resources, task management with responsibility tracking, and a group text-chat, negating the need for multiple external tools and significantly enhancing the game jam experience.

Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Description: Mirror² is a two-way mirror with a monitor behind it that allows different features to be displayed on the mirror such as the weather forecast or the calendar. The main feature of the mirror features a camera that will capture the image of a person's clothing and will suggest similar clothing items. There will also be a remote-control app that will control what is displayed on the mirror at a given time adding more personalization to the mirror. The mirror will allow people to have the freedom of getting ready and having all relevant pieces of information someone may need in a day displayed while doing so. The smaller features that will be displayed on the mirror are as follows: Weather forecast, calendar, email notifications, news, maps, and sticky notes. The main feature will be having a camera be able to scan what a person is wearing and then search the internet for similar clothing pieces. There will also be an app that will go hand in hand with the mirror that will allow more customization to the mirror.

Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Description: The project is a 3D multiplayer game built on the Unity game engine using the MLAPI package from unity to create the connection. The game will be a desktop application that is planned to be published on game sharing platforms i.e., steam, itch.io, etc. The gameplay will be a 1 vs 3 styled “cat and mouse” chase with a few added elements. The goal of the individual player will be to destroy certain parts of a computer with the aid of different attacks styled after malware attacks. The opposing security team’s objective is to try and stop the malware before it destroys the computer. The security team will be able to select from a set of characters that will each have a small set of different abilities to help try and stop the computer malware that is attacking. The project was decided due an interest in game development, and this is a good way to gain experience in the field.

Fall 2021 - Spring 2022

Description: This game provides an immersive AR experience for users to be motivated to get fit. When one plays this game, they will be able to create an avatar with similar physical attributes to themselves. Once created the goal is to reach the desired physique and maintain it, as the avatar’s physique could change rapidly based on the user’s activities. To obtain the optimal physique the users must burn a certain amount of calories through walking/jogging/exercises and also consume the correct foods found along their way. While using the AR the user has to walk or jog around, and the avatar will follow. Along their way, they will find several ‘food’ or ‘gym equipment items. The food is there to be consumed by the avatar which is required to be taken otherwise the avatar turns into a stick figure and the user is brought back to level one. There will be both healthy and unhealthy foods that can be consumed, the probability to find healthy foods is lower, so the user must roam around more to find them. When the user finds gym equipment, they are required to do the workouts prompted. As the user progresses throughout the game, they will rise in levels that increase in difficulty. The higher the level, the probability to find more gym equipment increases, healthier foods are more scarce, and the avatar's appearance becomes unhealthier faster.

Spring 2022 - Fall 2022

Description: The "Face Recognition Attendance System" project addresses the shortcomings of our university's current buff card-based attendance tracking method. The limitations of the current system, such as inability to accurately track attendance in large classes and the risk of marking a student absent if they forget to clock in, are all rectified with this new system. Utilizing advanced face recognition technology, the system checks for student presence every five minutes, ensuring a continuous update on the attendance status, identifying new arrivals and those who have left the class. The system is designed not only to improve accuracy in detecting attendance but also to present the data in various intuitive formats. In addition to capturing attendance, the system can calculate the duration each student spends in the classroom, effectively minimizing instances of early departures. This project presents an innovative solution for efficient and accurate student attendance tracking, contributing to enhanced classroom management and academic integrity.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Description: Camless piston engines are currently on the cutting edge of automobile technology. The concept is relatively simple; complete removal of an engine’s camshaft, replacing it with pneumatically operated actuators mounted directly on each valve. This allows for direct control of each valve individually. While some other companies have introduced concept cars with various camless implementations, the Koenigsegg Gemera 4 is currently the only camless vehicle planned for limited production, with a mere 300 units planned for deployment. According to Koenigsegg’s sister company, FreeValve, a camless engine can provide various benefits, including a 45% increase in power, a 47% increase in torque, a 15% fuel consumption reduction, and thus a 15% reduction in emissions, various improvements regarding use of bio-fuel and engine startup, and a 20-50 kg decrease in overall engine weight. Of course, FreeValve has a financial incentive to advertise the value of their product, but it seems unlikely a company such as Koenigsegg would pursue such a technology if it did not seem useful. Unfortunately, considering the Gemara’s estimated cost of €1.7 million, this technology is far from accessible to the general public. However, YouTube user Wesley Kagan has proven it is possible to re-create this technology with relatively few resources. Aiming to replicate the work of Mr. Kagan to some extent, the software engineering team, which has been the primary project team thus far, is currently acting in collaboration with an electrical/mechanical engineering team, who will directly modify an internal combustion engine and provide feedback, allowing the software engineering team to make adjustments as needed.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Description: Music is a central core of personal enrichment, and everyone has a different level of understanding and appreciation. Audio Visualization and Analysis (AVA) offers a way to listen and visualize the underlying mechanisms of a song. Those without a strong background in music can now have a visual aid in their understanding of an input song. AVA takes an input mp3 file, performs musical analysis on the mp3, and then outputs an mp4 file. The resulting mp4 will display an avatar(s) that will mimic the movement and mood. AVA will also generate meta-data about the input mp3 file and display that information to the user to further their understanding of the music.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Description: The objective of VR-Call is to give users an immersive calling experience with anyone in their contact list with a few people in a call at once. The transition between the application pages and the VR room should be short, however, the configuration page will provide users customization control over their profiles as well as the avatars that they use to enter the VR space. Overall, the user interface should be easy to use in hopes that users are satisfied by the time they hang up the call and exit the app. First-time users of VR-Call will go through the sign-up process to create an account. Information will include name, phone number, email, and password. That information will get processed and sent to our database hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Users will be able to modify their profile, add someone to their contact list by phone number, and enter a call in which users will then dock their phone inside their VR headset. After a user enters the VR environment, VR-Call should automatically receive and broadcast their voice and imitate body movements (if a webcam is connected) through their avatar.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

Description: The goal for this software is to introduce fundamental aspects of programming. Starting out with simple concepts, such as assignment statements and if statements. As the levels progress, the game goes deeper into programming concepts and specific languages. The game runs on the Unity game engine, an industry standard that helps build games of this sort. During the levels, the user will play a two-dimensional game as a programmer who controls an in-game robot that has to accomplish certain tasks. The user controls the robot by finishing in-game code fragments. The first phase of the project focuses on creating a rough prototype of the game. Next, the project design and implementation of levels the user will see, and create one or two beginning levels of the game using pseudo code. The second phase of our project will consist of creating seven or more levels that are either gradually harder than the first or use the programming languages Python and C# to implement what was taught in pseudo code.