Description: We intend to design an optical mouse capable of creating first-generation OCT images. This will be accomplished by integrating a specially designed optical sensor with a commercially available mouse. The sensor will transmit a signal based on the indicies of refraction of the epidermal layers. The signal will be demodulated by analog circuitry and displayed in realtime by using software to create an 8-bit greyscale images. The mouse will also collect data used to check the speed and linearity of the scan. This device will be able to scan many different surfaces, but the most important application is for skin imaging. The improved resolution of OCT imaging allows for detection and analyzation of skin conditions, lesions, and even skin cancer. The device will minimize contact with the patient and provide a more user-friendly interface for the technician using the device.

Team members: Andrew Simnick Tel: 708-921-3317, Simon Schlachter, Sagar Shah

Description: This project will attempt to construct a compact, self contained, secure check writing machine for a disabled individual who has difficulty writing. The machine will have an onboard memory which will store a balance which will be updated on each transaction. The user will be required to use a password and/or thumbprint to be able to use the machine, it will have a keypad for entering check amount and updated balance info, an LED Display, ON/OFF switch, an internal motor for feeding in a blank check, an internal printer and a system for recharging an onboard battery.

Team members: Leonard Santoso, Tim Havlir

Description: Our project will be to build an autonomous wearable device that will send a distress signal with GPS coordinates for a downed skier. Taking body temperature and heart rate will determine if skier is in need of assistance.

Team members: Supriya Gupta, Phillip Lachman Tel: 217-367-7879, Sandeep Gupta

Description: This project involves the characterization of sub-micron HBTs at extremely low temperatures below 100K. Low temperature transistor behavior is poorly understood, and low temperature testing can reveal the performance limit of a given material system. Both DC and RF performance will be studied.

Team members: Forest Dixon, Kurt Cimino

Description: This project will convert a typical children's car seat into a potential life saving device. It will detect that a child is strapped into a car seat while the car is off, and sense what the temperature is inisde the car. If the temperature reaches an unsafe threshold temperature, an alarm will sound, alerting nearby people that a baby is trapped inside the car.

Team members: Jason Carter Tel: 708-646-1178, JD Johnson Tel: 217-417-3609 [Web], Steve Kopchik Tel: 708-724-4375

Description: The electronic weightlifting spotter is a device that would eliminate the necessity for a human partner for various barbell-related exercises. The apparatus will sense the position of the bar and provide a counterforce during muscle contraction to help the user complete the exercise. Using a microcontroller, the electronic spotter will record the velocity of the bar and apply the necessary current and voltage to a variable-speed DC motor so as to provide adequate assistance to the user in real-time. The functional device should allow individuals to maximize training in a safe environment.

Team members: Jon Donenberg Tel: 847-217-7213, Barry Horwitz Tel: 217-344-1073

Description: The water-faucet micro generator will provide backup power in the case of a blackout. The user will hook their water faucet up to the unit by means of a hose. The water will drive a turbine connected to the shaft of a dc permanent magnet motor. The motor will act as a generator and produce dc power. Through the use of dc/dc and dc/ac inverters the motor output will be converted to 120 V at 60 Hz. This signal could be used to power an emergency light, a heating element, etc. The power output goal is 100 W. The turbine compartment will be sealed off to shield the motor and inverters from water which will be drained from the turbine compartment.

Team members: Mark Welsh Tel: 217-377-1525, Nathan Luzader Tel: 217-820-7307, Mark Vymyslicky Tel: 217-384-1390

Description: We would like to propose a more active solution to the car sear safety project. Our device would interface with the car to have varying degrees of action in order to ensure the child's safety. We would like to draw minimal power from the car's electrical system to make a more robust and versatile device that requires less human intervention and provides more immediate responses to dangerous situations. Part of our design would include a phone on a CDMA network. We chose this technology because it roams to analog and will have a wider range of use than GSM or iDen phones. We also plan on using a remote starter kit to allow us access to the car's electronics to roll down windows, and/or operate the air conditioner. We further plan on contacting either a major cellular provider or a local police dept to understand how well a dispatcher can locate a car using only a cell phone number. If this is insufficient, we hope to attach a GPS module to the car seat. Status So Far: Spoken with Dr. Stephen Boppart about sensors, specifically, what ranges do the CO and temperature sensor need to operate around. This will give us an idea for what sensor to choose. Also, have a request for information from Motorola concerning 911 Location specs.

Team members: Robert Schoonover Tel: 217-621-9944, Ryan Simpson Tel: 217-390-5929, Hans Voigt Tel: 847-494-4267

Description: This project will be to design and build a safety system for use in children’s car seats. The finished design will detect a child’s presence, measure temperature and transmit a distress signal when conditions degrade. An additional feature will be a GPS system that will relay the vehicle’s location in the distress signal. The entire design will be self-contained within the car seat.

Team members: Joshua Fladie, Sarah Stieber, Jiaxiao Zhang

Description: We plan to build an autonomous vehicle that will drive towards a destination through a specific set of waypoints. A GPS receiver will allow the vehicle to determine its location and help it reach the next waypoint. Wireless communication will be used to send the latitude and longitude of the waypoints to the vehicle, and the vehicle will continuously transmit its location, speed, and heading to the base station. Finally, a onboard microcontroller or PC board will be used to interpret the GPS data, control the drive system, and manage the RF communication.

Team members: Michael Hendrickson, Nick Keating, Greg McRobbie Tel: 217.766.2401

Description: This project, under the guidance of Prof. Kent Choquette, involves the development of an embedded system for real time modulation of a visible wavelength eight by eight VCSEL ( Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser) array for potential micro-imaging applications. The embedded system consists of synchronized micro-controllers that will turn on or off VCSEL array elements to provide a desired image. When modulated, the VCSEL array, with a square pitch of 250 microns, can produce images of a similar size and prove invaluable for microimaging applications.

Team members: Karthikraman Samakkulam, Manan Shah, Neeta Acharya

Description: 23. Network power for automobiles Automobiles contain complicated wire harnesses. In place of this complexity, we will be devising a "one power one communication" arrangement in which all control and conversion is local. We will be designing a multiple-output power supply that can handle an input range of about +8V to +60 V, and produce regulated +12 V for local loads in a car. In addition, the supply will have an isolated serial "control" input, so that a central network can turn each output on or off independently over a single pair of network wires. The project should demonstrate a supply with a single power input and a single control input that could operate up to 5 separate 12 V loads. The design requires two outputs of up to 50 W each and the rest able to supply up to 20 W. The control will use a standard CAN-bus protocol.

Team members: John Gunderson Tel: 1 217 417 4919, Kurtis Boll Tel: 1 847 814 7544

Description: This project involves a shoe-mount magnetic generator to produce electric energy during typical walking. Energy would be converted and stored in a rechargeable battery to smooth out the energy flow rate. The goal of the design is to extract energy at the rate of 1W during walking.

Team members: Adam Pike, John Ngai, Weilik Leong

Description: Implement the Parks-McClellan Algorithm for Optimal FIR low-pass filters on the TMS320C6711 DSP board. The user will be able to input filter parameters (pass band, stop band, filter length, and weightings) and we will calculate the optimal filter and filter the DSP input accordingly.

Team members: Arun Ramani Tel: (224)659-4654, Justin Haldar Tel: (217)721-3735

Description: This project will create a semi-intelligent power system capable of taking out low priority loads to keep blackouts from occurring.

Team members: Michelle Graden, Edgar Roman

Description: The purpose of our project is to create a system that will track the location of multiple beacons on a golf course. This will allow for a more efficient use of the golf course.

Team members: Daniel Lau Tel: 217-384-1056, Xinning Niu Tel: 217-332-4941, Alex Lin Tel: 217-384-1056

Description: We will work with Ms. Laura Tompson on the CD player project for children with multiple disabilities. Our main goal would be to design a device that is more reliable and cheaper than the CD players that is currently employed at schools. We will also work toward designing more functions that encourages different types of action sequences.

Team members: Michael Hoffmann Tel: 384-5375, Karen Wang Tel: 332 4758, Chun-Yi Wei (LAWRENCE) Tel: 6267575396

Description: A high throughput, purely random number generator. It uses single photon detection, a probabalistically balanced output, and an extremely fast counter to achieve random number output rates 10 to 20 times faster than current technology.

Team members: Jeff Kramer, Adam Petschke

Description: This project will create a home security system that can be armed and disarmed via a remote device, similar to a keyless entry system. The project will focus on the design of the remote device. The system will communicate in both directions, as we will be able to send an alarm to the remote device if the system is unarmed, or if the system has been compromised. The remote device and the home will both have a receiver and transmitter.

Team members: Samir Majumdar, Proteek Sanyal, Arnab Das

Description: This project consists of designing a method of taking a 20MHz signal from the A/D converter used by Prof. Larkin and designing a method to give him the ability to only take a desired amount of data from it after an initial radar pulse so that the data that is not wanted or too far out to be of any interest can be disregarded. This will allow the data gathering to be more efficient. The problem is that the A/D converter does not give the user the ability to control the number of samples given after any particular radar pulse. Only a fraction of the samples after a particular pulse are useful. This results in the need to manipulate the data awkwardly so as to not waste space on the computer storing uneeded data. For the solution, we will build the needed hardware and software to allow the user to specify how many samples is desired after any particular pulse and only record this subset of samples to disc without the need to constantly turn of the A/D converter and manipulate the data during every radar pulse.

Team members: Cliff Kucharski, Megan Yuill, Ryan Dawson

Description: We plan to offer a low-cost solution for the already available laptop "car charger".

Team members: Andrew Morgan, Alicia Shepherd

Description: We are working with Dr. Ron Larkin and Ben Kamen and the Department of Natural Resources to develop a stand alone power supply for wildlife towers off the power grid. The function of the tower is to track tagged animals and their movement in their habitat. We propose a hybrid wind and photovoltaic system to power the towers. We will deliver a power budget and system to the department. We plan to build our own test station

Team members: David Maggio, Laurel Bolhouse, Natalie Robles

Description: We plan to develop a threshold-triggered RFID (radio-frequency identification) sensor platform. A switch sensor would change the binary value in the "public" identification code of an RFID tag which would then broadcast the code to a nearby receiver. The receiver would subsequently warn the user of the event.

Team members: Val Grinberg Tel: 217-390-5924, Mike Fragoso, Ronak Shah

Description: Design, simulation and fabrication of top hybrid dielectric distributed Bragg reflector vertical cavity surface emitting laser.

Team members: Uppiliappan Krishnamachari

Description: We are building a device to determine the onset of heat stroke in ECE314. Heat stroke can cause injury to the nervous system, liver, and kidneys and is therfore a serious threat for people working or training outdoors. In our ECE345 project we will design a device to transmit an RF signal containing the individual's location if the individual is experiencing a heat stroke so that they can receive immediate medical attention.

Team members: Jason Kurien, Sun Mia Chuen

Description: We are interested in building an efficient low-power supply. The power supply will take power from a single or pair of batteries and deliver regulated 3 V output at power levels between 10 mW and 100 mW for a sensor application. The efficiency with a 100 mW load will be greater than 95%, and for a 10 mW load will be greater than 75%. The supply will also have a "sleep" mode in which it draws less than 0.1 mW. Sleep mode is set when a control pin is connected to a high impedance, and the supply recovers to normal operation when the control pin is connected to ground through a low impedance.

Team members: Hyong Yun, Steven Morton

Description: Automobiles will make a transition to a 42 V electrical system soon, but many 12 V parts will still be used. The objective is to design and build an efficient but very inexpensive power electronic converter for 42 V to 12 V, to serve older parts of the system. Cost is the biggest issue, followed by size.

Team members: Jeremiah Smith Tel: 365-5887, David Savageau Tel: 344-3573, Matt Meinhart Tel: 344-3573

Description: The Vibrating ear plug will serve as an alerting device. The ear plugs will be programmed through a docking station to vibrate at a programmed time. Ear plug will be connected by small wires designed so that the person wearing the earplugs won't be bothered by it.

Team members: Peter Lee, Seung Lee, Carlos Chan

Description: Our project is an autonomous cell culture monitor that checks cell variables such as pH, temperature, oxygen saturation and fluid conductivity and against set parameters. If the variables are not within the set parameters, the monitor will adjust accordingly.

Team members: Joseph Beard Tel: 840-2634, Michael Caro Tel: 3283009

Description: We are making a synthesizer, which uses FM synthesis to produce sound. The pitch of the sound will be controlled by a MIDI input. The timbre of the sound will be controlled by physical knobs/sliders which control the parameters of the synthesizer. It's a stand alone product which produces a variety of sounds useful for music composition and performance.

Team members: Margaret Hsu, Arjun Kulothungun [Web]

Description: Multifunction Robotic Mouse which is aimed towards encompassing various disciplines found in engeinnering: DSP processing, RF signals, software programming and hardware circuit design. We have 2 objective for the mouse: (1) to navigate a random maze, a 7x7 grid of cells, from one corner to the center, (2) to use RF signals to locate and acquire a stationary target while avoiding "simple" obstacles.

Team members: Adam Kim, Peter Shin, Iype Thomas

Description: The motivation for this project is the growing concern of our dwindling supply of natural resources. The concerns surrounding oil and the consequences when gone, have forced government and industry into researching alternative resources of energy. An example of this can be seen in the last several years; many automobile makers have focused on hybrid vehicles. One of the fastest and most promising technologies is the fuel cell. This device captures the power released when hydrogen and oxygen move across a selectively permeable membrane. The result is power source much like a battery whose only byproduct is water. In order to provide the hydrogen and oxygen in the beginning, some method must be used to separate theses gases into very pure concentrations. The most current method is the use of fossil fuels in refineries. This creates the problem of costly pollutants and still does not solve the problem of replacing the natural resources. Why not use the sun and water, two very abundant resources, to separate hydrogen and oxygen for later recombination. However, one of the problems facing our society is the lack of infrastructure to support the national production of hydrogen as a clean fuel. Hence, our goal for this project is to create a device that will efficiently utilize solar power to prepare hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells. A long term goal is to create a miniature model for a possible array of solar powered electrolysis devices.

Team members: Johnny Bui Tel: 217-721-5262, Justin Boike Tel: 847-530-6455

Description: The Speech Synthesized Temperature Sensor is a device that interprets data output from a temperature sensor and outputs a speech synthesized message informing the user of the current temperature. This device could be used as an extra layer of security for the car safety seat project by warning the driver to remove their child from the car if the temperature exceeds a maximum threshold. Also, the device could be used as an aid to the visually impaired by providing information regarding their environment by a verbal message.

Team members: Denise Kittrell Tel: 217-337-8876

Description: We are planning to design a bus locator system, which will track the location of the bus using a transmitter-receiver system. The bus status will be displayed at all the bus terminals using an LCD display. If time permits, we will further modify the system by relaying the bus information to a web-hosting server where travelers can check the status of the bus using Internet. This system could be used on our campus, which will help students to track the bus and not waste time waiting for the bus. This system will also help the students know if a bus is not on schedule or has been canceled due to technical or weather issues. Some of the issues we will have to work on will be related to the transmission of information form the bus and receiving the information on the terminals. The other issue we will have to work on is the displaying of accurate and efficient information of all the buses that stop on a given terminal. We will closely work with MTD, for modifying our project as per their needs.

Team members: Ankit Gandhi Tel: 217-355-4639, Ruchir Patel Tel: 217-355-3543, Kashyap Patel Tel: 217-355-3543

Description: A car that utilizes adaptive beamforming to follow an acoustic speech signal.

Team members: Jason Ching, Michael Mar, Clayton Chan

Description: To design a water faucet system which will be controlled by a microcontroller that utilises temperature sensors and motors to control the temperature of the output water. The interface will involve 2 buttons (up and down) to set the desired temperature, and an LCD display showing the output temperature. If time permits, we will also make the faucet turn on and off via IR sensor. Note: The faucet's flow rate will be constant, with only the temperature as a variable.

Team members: Tarek Fathy, Wesam Salama

Description: Alignment algorithms are one of the first applications of algorithms to biology. They help biologisrs find common regions in the genomes of different species. We are planning on developing and implementing techniques that would optimize a multiple alignment of biological sequences. Computing a multiple alignment of genomic sequences by brute force is computationally impossible. Therefore most multiple aligners use heuristics. Hence we need techniques to optimize and further improve a multiple alignment : The code is going to be developed in C++. We already have a basic architecture designed. The code is going to be computationally intensive and we are expecting slow running times. So we plan to use hardware to try to speed up the code.

Team members: Aswath Manohar, Chen Chen, Thad Tasso

Description: This portable breathalyzer will wirelessly transmit your B.A.C. to a circuit in your car that will allow or disallow the operation of the vehicle in accord with local laws.

Team members: Todd Borrowman, Rob Wilson

Description: The project is for Professor Geir Dullerud’s HoTDeC project (Hovercraft Testbed for Decentralized Control – http://legend.me.uiuc.edu/hotdec/). Our team is to develop an implementation to network a series of Firewire cameras to determine the position of an object while passing through a large area. This large area is divided into overlapping sub-domains. Multiple hovercrafts are to travel autonomously through the domains without colliding. In order to accomplish this task, we must investigate the UDP connection between the camera and the server, and come up with an information handoff algorithm. Also, the Kalman Filter Estimation can be used to calculate the position and possibly the velocity of the hovercrafts in the domain.

Team members: Shirley Chang, Alfred Pang, Jeff Chieh

Description: This project will create a device that will control a piezo electric crystal to move a mirror in an interferometer. It will then read the output from the photodiode and output the contrast in the signal. A software program will calculate the linewidth of the source and the coherence length from the device output.

Team members: Doug Jorgesen Tel: 217.417.1363

Description: Monitors vital signs of a patient and tracks the person's location. In case of emergencies and critical vital signs, the device will transmit a signal of the patients location so that help can be sent to them expediently. This project would be worth doing for patients that have severe illnesses that would require immediate attention if their vital signs were to become critical.

Team members: Matthew Lee, Daniel Chen

Description:

Team members: flee@illinois.edu

Description: Home video game system using a nintendo gamepad for input and a LCD display for output of graphics, with a Motorolla HC12 processor to execute the programs and control input and output for the system.

Team members: Daniel Jaramillo Tel: 217-638-8189, Aman Singh Tel: 217-721-0895, Pranav Kacholia Tel: 217-721-4465

Description: don't know yet

Team members: Ryan Cheng

Description:

Team members: dchen5@illinois.edu

Description: The aim of this project is to build a circuit which can support an expert modeling methodology to determine the time- and frequency- domain solutions for the electromagnetic coupling between vias in multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs). This methodology has been developed in the research class, ECE 298/299. The proposed modeling methodology is based on the observation that as the via traverses a power-ground plane pair in the PCB, its current launches a cylindrical (radial) wave that propagates as a cylindrical transverse electromagnetic (TEM) wave between the planes. These waves are intercepted by vias associated with other nets, resulting in interference between the nets. This form of interference cannot be predicted by existing crosstalk tools which model only distributed capacitive and inductive coupling between adjacent wires running parallel to each other. The experiment would seek to test the importance of electromagnetic interference between vias of a parallel metallic plate configuration, and from this comparisons can be drawn to approximate the accuracy of the developed methodology.

Team members: Wallace Wong

Description: We intend to design a low power extended range dc motor controller that will take input power from a 12V lead acid battery. Due to possible inconsistencies of the battery, our converter will be designed for an input range of 9V-15V. The resulting output range will be 0V to 15V, thus requiring a buck-boost dc-dc converter. The output will be adjustbale to permit speed control, and the output range will be maintained for all allowable input voltages. The output power will be up to 250W continuous, and will be able to maintain 500W for up to one minute.

Team members: Sungjoon Cho, Jeffrey Ma

Description:

Team members: mbhangar@illinois.edu

Description:

Team members: jcmeier@illinois.edu

Description:

Team members: gladwin@illinois.edu