Envision Fund Projects

The following projects have received Envision Funds: 

April, 2013
 

Driver Attention Boost System, Part 1   

Yanzi Zhu,Electrical Engineer and Mathematics, Junior
Bohan Li,Psychology, Junior
Haotong Guo,Electrical Engineer, Junior
Xiaobin Lin, Computer Engineering, Junior
Jia Zhang, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Junior
Driving in high risk situations, such as high speed and low illumination, can be fatally dangerous, which is due in part to the limiting factors in human beings. Without proper prompting messages, the driver may not have enough time to direct attention to obstacles on the road and react to it, and thus tragedies result. To address this problem, members of our team work collaboratively, drawing knowledge from psychology and electric engineering, in the effort to develop a vehicle safety system that cues the general direction of the obstacle, using both auditory and tactile feedback, which enables the driver to direct his/her attention to the space containing the obstacle before it is perceived by human eyes. This system has high application value in that it may reduce the chance of accidents in high risk driving conditions.

Remote Controlled Raspberry Pi Media Hub

Tor Anderson, sophomore - Electrical Engineering
Younan Zhu, sophomore - Math & Finance
Nate DeTurk, sophomore - Electrical Engineering
John Hanson, sophomore - Electrical Engineering
Remote Controlled Pi Media Hub: In this project, we aim to learn more about the Linux operating system and small single board computers. We will do so by purchasing several Raspberry Pis and working to turn these in to media hubs or vintage video game console emulators. We will attempt to integrate some sort of controller as a remote for these systems. Specifically, we plan to use and improve upon an Xbox 360 controller driver that can be adapted for the Linux OS that allows for an Xbox 360 controller to be programmed/encoded for operation on Linux systems.

Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System Controls    

Harold Jack Stevens III – ME
Shravan Surendran – EE
The goal of this project is to create an automated temperature and flow controller for a mash re-circulation system.

March, 2013

Raspberry Pi Graphing Calculator

Scott Sievert, EE, sophomore
The Raspberry Pi is a small credit card sized computer that includes HDMI ports, audio ports and USB ports.
From this, I plan to make a graphing calculator, with a small 3.5" display and a small USB keyboard.
My calculator will run Sage (Sagemath.org.), a free and open source alternative to Matlab and Mathematica.
The feature to graph also is included in this project.
 

Runner's GPS

Dan Taylor, CE, junior
I'd like to build a GPS system for runners, doing things like displaying current time, speed, distance traveled,
location on map, etc. Data and maps would be saved to/loaded from an SD card, and displayed on a small LCD.
 

Obstacle Detection and Avoidance

Bryan Stadick, Electrical Engineering (junior)
David Haugen, Computer Engineering (senior)
Email Alwis, Electrical Engineering (junior)
Max Veit, Physics and Computer Science (junior)
Nick Hammes, Computer Science (sophomore)
Ryan Kotval, Computer Science (sophomore)
We are working on a system that will detect objects using vision processing then determine the distance to
the object. The output will then be a two dimensional matrix of objects, their size, and their location relative to
the sensors. The map will contain a 360-degree view around the sensors. The ultimate goal is to make this a
low-cost solution that is adaptable to multiple situations.
 

ULSI Rocket Team

Kenneth Condon, Electrical Engineering (junior)
Mark Abotossaway, Aerospace Engineering, (senior)
Amir Ener, Aerospace Engineering (senior)
Devin Volmer, Aerospace Engineering (senior)
Gregory Zeien, Mechanical Engineering (freshman)
Hannah Weiher, Aerospace Engineering (junior)
Binh Bui, Aerospace Engineering (senior)
Kendall Schneider, Aerospace Engineering (senior)
Matthew Donohue, Aerospace Engineering (junior)
Monique Hladun, Aerospace Engineering (graduate student)
Nathan Kluegel, Aerospace Engineering (senior)
Vishnuu Mallik, Aerospace Engineering (junior)
Samuel Coley, Aerospace Engineering (junior)
Tim Chau, Aerospace Engineering (junior)
Our team is made up of 15 engineering students who are working on building a competitive rocket for the
USLI competition in April 2013. The competition is a national contest to design, to build, and to launch a
high-powered rocket with an on board engineering payload. Our rocket will travel to one mile in altitude,
safely return all of its components, and  release the rover payload.

Although small scale rocketry may seem simple at face value, the contest is quite rigorous. USLI challenges
students to tackle new technology, planning, and management skills necessary for successful careers
in engineering. The experience will help prepare students for entry into professional life where safety
and creative problem solving are key.

We have been working on this project since August 2012, a continuation of the design of last year's rocket.
Our design was accept by NASA in September, we held out PDR in November, DCR a few weeks ago,
and now are working towards building a second half-scale test rocket, then the full scale competition rocket."
 

Multicopter Build

Mark Gilbertson, Mechanical Engineering (junior)
Kevin Zoch, Mechanical Engineering (sophomore)
Connor Lewis, Mechanical Engineering (sophomore)
Jordan Gustafson, Electrical Engineering (sophomore)
Michael D'Agostino, Electrical Engineering (sophomore)
Our project would be a multi-rotor copter. The number of rotors would depend on the funding, a hexcopter
being the preferred.  
 

Virtual Cycling

Kyle Bergemann, Computer Engineering (junior)
Aaron Jiang
A bike trainer is used to mount your road bike on during the winter months, and therefore enable you  to
train indoors. This has one large drawback however, it gets very boring. I would like to design an integrated
system that uses a video from actual outside riding, and takes into account speed of your bike to adjust the
playback speed of the video. This will integrate with the ANT+ standard that Garmin uses for their speedometer
bike options. With this integration, the rider will have a realistic experience, seeing that his speed actually
corresponds to something.