Partners Day and Senior Design Showcase 2020
The Senior Design Capstone projects at UC Santa Cruz represent several quarters of group effort. Some are sponsored and developed with corporate partners, others are conceived of entirely by students. This year, teams faced an additional challenge with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Find out how they worked around what at first seemed like an impossible challenge.
We are designing an inexpensive, easy-to-use, autonomously flying drone for detecting and monitoring small fires to reduce the response time of first responders. Antone Bajor, Janelle Chen, Skyler Ow-Bearing, Evan Plummer.
Establishing a connection between common switch control appliances and Alexa to improve the quality of life for those with physical disabilities. The installation process is voice-enabled, making the only physical interaction required being the process of connecting wires to the adapter. Anon Cheewakarn, Bryan Jimenez, Cagan Bakirci, Christopher Gunter, Kenneth Mai.
Offering a cost-effective method to retrofit existing household appliances with accessibility features. Pairing the Alexa voice assistant with the hardware flexibility of a Raspberry Pi to control IR and RF enabled home appliances. Nixon Duong, Nikhil Punathil Ellath, Peter Eskraus, Vincent Thai, Tongze Wang.
Internet service providers and massive corporations compete to get their information across faster than the rest. In the process gamers often experience connection issues. Our goal is to find a way to remedy this problem and provide a better online experience, not just for gamers, but for everyone. Alan Vasilkovsky, Collyn Noda, Howard Ng, Jasleen Kaur, Lilian Gallon, Xudong Guo, and Cody Hartsook.
A drone’s ability to get a different environmental perspective is useful in offroading, where success depends on choosing the perfect route through terrain. By building an offroad spotting drone, Mercedes hopes to achieve an engaging and safe off road experience for their SUV market. Cameron Rabiyan, Manveer Randhawa, Ninghao He, Ryan Steinwert, Zhaoheng Chen
The Resilient Reliable Efficient Energy Systems (RREES) Lab aims to deliver power quality data fast enough to keep the failure from becoming an emergency, detailed enough to identify the failure, and comprehensive enough to locate the failure. Our team built open source software to: identify important events in the SEADS data, notify homeowners, inform grid managers of event locations and provide machine learning experts with data. Alex Bistagne, Guangyang Chen, Joseph Csoti, Nathaniel Tjandra
UCSC students do not have a way to track campus buses. Our iOS app provides this functionality by using an existing system that locates buses with radio base stations. Using their data, we provide a clean and modern app to live-read the GPS location of on-campus buses and get an accurate ETA to bus stops. Brian Thyfault, Nathan Lakritz, Radomyr Bezghin, Rizzian Ciprian Tuazon.
The U.S spends a disproportionate amount on healthcare. We utilized machine learning tools to create models that predict a patient’s future health conditions given their previous medical history in order for Anthem to provide better care for the patients and reduce costs. Aman Prasad, Brendan Reilly-Langer, Perry Yang, Cassidy Norfleet, Harshitha Arul Murugan, Shayan Shaikh.
In-memory databases supporting online transactional and analytical workloads rely on differential updates to manage writes while maintaining the majority of data in an optimized read-only structure. This necessitates the merge of a write optimized delta partition with the read-only main partition. The purpose of this project is to develop an FPGA using OpenCL that can reduce this bottleneck on the database. Akihiro Mizusawa, Andrew Hartwell, Jordan Leggett, Robert Mushkot, Vadim Pelyushenko.
Joaquin Banuelos, John Bennett, Merlin Gunn-Cicero, George Leece, Stephanie Lin, Angelica Martinez, Luis Mercado, Vianey Padilla.
The goal of this project is to take Data Studio, a web-based notebook platform that is currently still in development, and identify bottlenecks from queries to the database. Using Java Microbenchmark Harness, we created a testing suite that extracts information used to optimize bottlenecks and improve latency. Haofan Wang, Jinxiao Song, Michael Zhang, William Kudsk.
Our goal is to make a service that leverages Parquet in the simplest, and most efficient way, including operations for file conversion and other data processing tools. We hope to create a simple, light-weight service that allows clients to process Parquet files in a more efficient manner than existing libraries. David Hernandez Lopez, Phu Le, Seshasai Vaddadhi, Xiaobin Wu, Yibo Guo.
Whenever an incoming call is detected, our app automatically scans through your list of contacts, a list of insurance cases, and determines which case the incoming call is most likely related to. The stored case information is then automatically pulled up so that the user can quick-reference it during the call. Andrew Leamy, Allan Wong, Travis Kerns, Tarun Sivakumar.
Land Trust Mobile is a mobile app for users to register for permits, report conditions of regions, access company content, and utilize specialized maps. The reports and permits can be viewed on the sponsor’s end in order to take appropriate/timely action and have a record of trail frequency. Matthew Wirtz, Yuhao Deng, Zihan Yang.
Glooko’s app collects data from various medical instruments designed for people living with diabetes. Our app introduces a speech-activated chatbot that allows the user to learn more about their diabetes, through trends in their daily Glucose readings, and questions they can ask. Eduardo Villa, Hoa Nguyen, Jade Bergamini, Kevin Zhang, Nicholas Henderson, Zuzanna Dubanowska.
The Consumer Health App allows users to connect a variety of different data sources to their Accolade health profile. This data is collated, stored in the cloud, and then visualized on our web application, giving the user instant access to all of their healthcare data such as their biometric and activity data in real time. Chuangbo Tong, Emerson Christie, Neel Apte, Nicole Ng, Victor Ye, Yousef Dost.
ResearchConnect is a platform for professors to advertise research opportunities for both undergrad and graduate students. Professors are able to post research opportunities and filter applicants with questionnaires. Students can browse through currently available research opportunities to apply and find helpful information on how to approach professors. Faraz Rashid, Liren Wu, Cecilia Li.
Marine Plastics Monitor offers a website and mobile application where users can fill out survey reports about the type & amount of debris that collects on local beaches. This data is then visually represented on a map and through charts to show where the problems lie to better understand the distribution of plastic waste. Karishma Shah, Orlando Chavez, Raeeka Yusuf, Sean Gibson.
The goal of this project is to analyze and determine the efficiency and accuracy of automotive radar and camera sensors, for the use of robots in a variety of indoor settings, with various tasks such as object and motion detection. Babak Farahmand, Daniel Luft-Martinez, Mayowa Borisade, Paige Riola, Shealtiel Mulder, Walter Condori.
The current searching architecture at Classmates uses old technology that does not fully support the amount of data required to search. With this project, we researched and discovered a way to quickly allow Classmates users to quickly search through data and get results Chuanshi Zhu, Kristopher Rollert, Kai Schniedergers, Michelle Slaughter.
Wireguard is a new protocol that promises a smaller codebase and stronger performance. We have used this VPN to develop our own connection manager micro-service that will route users to servers and provide each user an isolated namespace to ensure the expected security of a VPN connection and making configurations simple for customers. Cameron Saifizadeh, Jonathan Huey, Sinclair Liang, Sanjeet Jain, Kailas Krivanka.
Edu plastic pollution is an interactive education web application deals with the growing problem of plastic pollution by educating the general public on the life cycle of plastic as it deteriorates from a macro to a micro to a nano, and its detrimental effects on the environment, wildlife, and human health in each stage. Made in collaboration with the IDEASS lab. Anna Kovneva, Cristian Carrillo Castillo, Collin Hurst
Learning Storage Networks targets the domain of error collection and analysis of switch based networks using machine learning. It is enterprise software intended to be used by HPE and their customers to collect and analyze fabrics made up of switches automatically, without need for manual input or intervention until actual erroneous behavior is detected. Cody Hartsook, Daniel Panasyuk, John Hornbuckle, Joseph Rodrigues, Paripinya Srijunyanont, Rahul Mahendru, Rohith Bollineni.
The average American driver spends approximately 17 hours per year searching for parking at a cost of $345 per driver in wasted time, fuel, and emissions. We’ve created a mobile application that automates scheduled parking between drivers and homeowners. Automated parking will increase parking accessibility, ease the lives of commuters, and contribute to curbing CO2 emissions. Adithya Somasundaram, Henry Dang, Ivy La, Korbie Sevilla, Scott Melero.
This application uses data collected from the UCSC Long Marine Stranding to create a heat map that can be filtered with different mammal attributes such as sex, species, and year of standing. Azizkhuja Asomiddinov, Ashley Pauley, Harrison Fox, Maya Apotheker, Natalie Wilson.
Why Create a Hydroponic Box? Getting fresh produce can be hard for students given the scarcity of fast and reliable transportation off campus, especially when public transportation options can pose a health risk.. Paniz Hadjian, Oliver Mulcahy, Daniel Avery, Nicholas Tai, Gia Trinh, Sofia Ramos Rangel.
How do you deploy enough buses during peak hours? Bryan Munoz Garcia, Kevin Jesubalan, Jorge Henriquez, Alexis Chavez, Jennie Nguyen, Natan Lao.
Need: It’s too hard for beginners to learn about CPU design. Goal: Make it easier for beginners to learn about CPU design. Design Objectives: Produce a complete CPU design that includes seven lessons and practice exercises at the end of every lesson. Target Audience: Educational institutions that want to use a simplified CPU to teach a class and self-learners. Learning Modules: The completion time of the entire lesson plan is 3.6 hoursCPU Training Course. Kai Tamkun, Rosario Jauregui, Rayne Jones, Tiffany Luong, Weiziang Xu.
Assistance for visually impaired swimmers to minimize supervision and facilitate safe swimming. Corey Dickson, Linda Luu, James Melvin, Riley Silva, Venkat Vetsa.
Maintenance and inspections for nuclear power plants are dangerous for humans to perform without shutting down facilities. Our goal os to reduce the danger levels of inspecting nuclear power plants while achieving minimal downtime. Cole Hlava, Jacob Lambert, William Shaddix, Saameyar Shamlou, Alon Uralevich.
Elderly and disabled persons have difficulty carrying personal items. To alleviate this issue, our goal is to design an assistive robot with autonomous tracking and self-stabilizing capabilities.Jornell Quiambao, Diego Reyes, Khem Holden, Jeffrey Ng, Andrew Lei, Omar Escareno
Manufacture a low-cost, low-power parking lot system that will detect open parking spaces in clear conditions. This product will track multiple parking spaces per sensor, and have moderate maintenance during extended use. Christian Cortes, Angel Juarez, Angela Rodriguez, Isaiah Barron, Omar Reyes Cisneros.
To create an alternative to the traditional white cane used by the visually impaired to help them navigate the world and live an independent life. Brandon Hayame, Margaret Clinton, Robin Seguin, Alfonso Pimentel.
We found out that the need for automatic cat litter boxes is increasing over the days. Most of the automatic cat litter box on the market now is too expensive for general customers.(ranging from $500-900). The emergency system in the litter boxes on the market are not very efficient. Jiaqi Miao, Huihao Chen, Poucheong Chong, Meiying Li, Yifeng Qin, Xingyu Zhou.
To develop a method to track and display the number of cartridges remaining in a magazine. Rainie Read, Brian Lucht, Allen Armstrong, Andrew Wong, Walter Burnham
Our goal is to provide affordable primary flight display technology to electric ultralight aircraft owners to enhance their safety during flight. Jhean Domingo, Ricardo Hernandez, Cordell Kair, Manuel Lira, Fernando Lopez, Garrett Mason, Maulin Vajir.
Helping to automate recycling for your local recycling facilities. The purpose of ARbot is to help Material Recycling Facilities (MRFs) meet the current 0.5%[1] contamination threshold imposed on global recycling operations. The ARbot team aims to deliver a sorting technology, designed to meet the industry’s cost-sensitive demographic. Martin Contreras, Neha Dhayanand, Logan Fansler, Viet Nguyen, Clayton Tan.
Bringing residential irrigation into the 21st century with active sensing and real-time forecast data. Sam Aiken, Brian Naranjo, Grant Skidmore, Henry Tuckfield.
Students & faculty at UCSC require accessible, reliable, and accurate information to create an efficient schedule for moving around, and off (to/from) campus. Gavin Haight, Farinaz Rezvani, Katelyn Young, Alexander Zuo.
To provide researchers at any level with the tools needed to study plant gas exchange, in hopes of illuminating how climate change is affecting plant ecosystems. Samuel Bower, Daniel Brenner, Jonathan Nguyen, Yan Pei, Miguel Torres.
Our team’s goal is to improve quality of life for the Deaf community by increasing situational awareness through assistive technology. Our device’s response to loud sounds and fire alarms eliminates the need for constant vigilance of one’s surroundings. Harjit Chahal, Varun Rapaka.
The Googun is a corporate-sponsored project aimed at building a system for stress-testing medical devices in development, by providing a cheaper, safe alternative to human test subjects. Our Googun offers pseudo-realistic mucus production and cough behavior, similar to that of an average person, making it ideal for testing respiratory devices. Owen Bosley, Natalie Luttrell, Lisa McPhillips, Patrick Mogianesi, Todd Nabonne.
Our mission is to improve existing technology with intelligent design. We aim to push the boundaries of three-phase motors with cost effective solutions that benefit the consumer market. Sergio Mendez Vargo. Gerald Shafer.
Save Lives by Revolutionizing MIP (minimal invasive procedure) Technology. Remotely controlled miniature robot that traverses liquid surfaces with no motors or moving parts. Summer Alherz, Alexander Bakaleynik, Philip Canete, Alexandra Hunsinger, Nicholas Van Oss
OurSmart Seat Cover offers unprecedented levels of physical awareness and life-long improvements in postural habits from the very first moment of usage, causing increased physical and mental well-being. Christopher Cheney, Ali Fallahi, Zachary Haughton.
Our team is dedicated to the prevention of vehicular heatstroke and we believe that applying our engineering prowess can help create engineering solutions to this modern problem. Kyron Foo, Kaixuan Huang, Jose Lopez, Mason Mulholland, Kevin Navarro, Summaya Rehman, Truc Nguyen Tran.
We value the need to increase the standard of living for members of the homeless community by connecting them to society with essential and reliable communication devices. Nicholas Hopwood, Jeffrey Lo, Hamza Mahmood, Aditya Sehgal, Jordan Tam.
Slugsat aims to develop UCSC's first cubesat and lay the foundations for a cubesat program. Jonathan Adams, Juan Ayala, Luis Barragan, Alexandria Brown, Christopher Calderon, Caleb Cotter, Allyson Diaz, Ali Elagamawi, Edison Grauman, Conner Hannon, Hui Huang, Nicholas Jannuzzi, Myunggeun Kang, Sloan Liu, Nathen Ly, Christopher Magat, Tomohiro Shimada, Aaron Wood.
Our team aims to help improve society and lessen the spread of disease by designing reliable and safe UV-C sanitation equipment that is accessible for everyone. Christian Deguzman, Mattiana Lang, Mary McNeil, Ethan Santos.