In U.S., about 63% of households include pets. However, certain pets (such as dogs) have the instinct to run away from the house. Yet, it is impossible for the pet owners to watch their pets all the time. Therefore, a portable and inexpensive handheld tracking system can be a useful tool for helping the owners to watch their pets.
This project intend to employ iBeacon, which is a technology released by Apple Inc., to build a tracking system. The iBeacon technique can achieve distance measurements based on the Received Signal Strength (RSS). The RSS value will change as the distance between Beacon and the signal receiving device change. Moreover, the iBeacon tag device for pets (called iBeacon tags) is small (in the size of a quarter) enough to put on the collar of a pet. The application will store the information of beacons (including UUID, which is used to distinguish different beacons) that provide by users, and continually detect the signal from the beacons. When the signal is not strong enough, which means the Beacon is out of the controllable range, then the application will alert the user.

Hearing aids aim to process and modify sounds into the most desirable forms for hearing impaired people to receive. However, due to multiple reasons including inconvenience and limited quality, only 20 percent of the people in the US who could benefit from a hearing aid wear one. This figure is likely to be much lower in other less developed countries.

Recently, smartphones with powerful computation capability and great mobility have emerged as a possible alternative for this problem. We have developed a preliminary iOS application with certain sound processing functionalities. It is able to collect all the sounds in the vicinity and amplify custom frequencies depending on the prescriptions of a specific user. In addition, the application can also produce different output on either the left or the right headphone piece. We have taken initial steps to make the system operate wirelessly with a Bluetooth earpiece; however, due to time and resources constraints, the application has not yet able to divide two distinct output like what it does on the normal iPhone earpiece. Also, a method for shifting sounds to lower frequency has not yet been implemented. We also have not yet tested the program to its fullest potential due to the sole access to only built-in iPhone’s microphone. A special microphone with many features such as noises canceling, separate streaming, and high sampling rate will enables us fully customize and prepare the application for future technologies. Our future system is expected to address these challenges.

In this experiment, we examine the non-linear dynamics of a mechanical system consisting of an inverted pendulum with one free-turning rotational degree-of-freedom attached to a computer-controlled cart with one linear degree-of-freedom. Using a Quanser Linear Servo Base Unit with Inverted Pendulum and paired software package, we used first principles to develop the non-linear control system needed to move the pendulum from stable equilibrium to unstable equilibrium and maintain unstable equilibrium. This combines the self-erecting inverted pendulum experiment and the classic pendulum experiment. Through the paired software package, we were able to derive the dynamic equations to develop the transfer function and proportional-velocity feedback system that describe the linear motion of the cart, successfully creating the non-linear control system for both phases of the experiment.

This report examines the function, accuracy, and ease of use of an XBOX Kinect™ as a 3D surface scanner. The purpose of this experiment is to demonstrate the utility of a Kinect™ for XBOX 360 (Microsoft®) paired with Skanect (Occipital) and MeshLab software packages as a low cost solution to surface scanning and processing. My conclusion is that the Kinect™ is able to accurately model the recorded point cloud as a continuous 3D surface that matches the contour and scale of the test subject surface. Both Skanect and MeshLab effectively interpolated the smoothing of the 3D surfaces and provided higher resolution imaging than an unaltered image. The resultant resolution of the contoured surface is higher than the resolution of the 3D printers used in this experiment, demonstrating an effective digital duplication of a physical surface.

For this project, a digital grip gauge was designed for Lockheed Martin to measure the grip length of the aircraft skin of the F-35. The objective of the electrical group is to ensure that the gauge will be capable of recognizing when the measurement has stabilized. When stabilized, a light will turn on, which allows the operator to know the measurement is ready for reading. We developed three prototypes that each complete this objective. The first prototype uses two force sensitive resistors (FSR) powered by Arduino. The Arduino code is programmed to turn on a light when the forces on the sensors are equal for a certain range within different zones. The second prototype consists of a comparator circuit with two FSRs connected to a NAND gate. When both FSRs measure the same force, within a range, a light will turn on. The third prototype utilizes two small push buttons that complete a circuit. When both buttons are pressed, the circuit is completed and a light will turn on, indicating to the operator that the part is flush with the aircraft skin and the measurement is stabilized. While each of these prototypes satisfies the objective, the third prototype was ultimately selected due to size constraints of the gauge design.