EECS 373 Fall 2010 Sponsored Project Opportunities
Prabal Dutta, Thomas Schmid, Matt Smith, Ye-Sheng Kuo

Background: There are lots of interesting embedded systems out there
that researchers could use but either don't have the skills or time to
actually design.  However, some of you many have the time and skills,
especially after 373, to create such things.  We'd like to encourage
that by identifying some projects opportunities.  Most of these won't
be as cool as building a small Segwey or a quadcopter.  On the other
hand, they are quite useful for addressing a range of research
problems.  Picking one of these projects will ensure that you will get
a lot of attention from the 373 instructional staff as well as a
nearly limitless budget (at least by 373 standards) to carry out your
ideas.  All of these projects can easily lead to publications in top
tier research conferences, so if you're interested in graduate school,
this would be an excellent way to get some visibility.

1. Cubic cm wireless sensor nodes.  Integrate a solar power supply,
   temperature/humidity/magnetic/motion/etc sensor, radio, ARM
   microcontroller, and a few other parts into an area that is about
   the volume of a cubic cm.  Design system software that can take
   sensor measurements when the lights are on and transmit them
   wirelessly.  Our goal is to build the "energy harvesting leaves"
   that the following paper describes:

   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/pubs/papers/schmid10disentangling.pdf

2. Spotlight recharging.  Design a system for transferring power to
   tiny, solar-powered sensors by pointing a flashlight attached to a
   servo to a sequence of locations in a room at which sensors are
   located.  You must design both the spotlight base system (around an
   ARM processor) and a search algorithm for scanning the space
   efficiently.  The spotlight base will require a radio that can
   listen to packet transmission from the remote wireless which occur
   when they are hit by bright light. Your design should achieve as
   high an end-to-end efficiency as possible.  Your system will take a
   list of coordinates, from a webpage, and then convert those
   coordinates into pan/tilt motions.  This system will then be used
   to charge light-powered sensors situated around an office on
   weekends (when office lights are off).  Especially impressive would
   be a system that could be placed near a window and use a mirror to
   reflect sunlight to the points of interest.

3. Software radio.  Combine the Actel hardware with offboard ADC/DAC
   chips and a radio frontend to implement a programmable radio.
   Successfully exchange data with the CC2520 radio.  This is a lot of
   work but if built would enable an entire research community to do
   some new things.  Over the next decade, such "programmable" or
   "soft" radios will become increasingly prevalent.  Some background
   material is available at the following url (we're basically trying
   to build a simple version of this):

   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/pubs/papers/dutta10sdr.pdf

4. Cubic inch wireless AC power meter.  Design, implement, and shrink
   a wireless power meter into a cubic inch format.  Design the
   electronics, hardware, and software to take measurements quickly.
   This project will involve integrating a radio, ARM microcontroller,
   and AC power metering chip.  It will involve dropping 120V down to
   a few volts in a small space.  Your system should be able to
   transmit the data wirelessly to a "base station" that then forwards
   it over the Internet to Google Power Meter or something similar.  A
   good overview of a similar system is available at the following
   url, but yours must be much smaller.  If you build this, lots of
   people will use it both at Michigan and all over the country:

   http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~prabal/pubs/papers/jiang09acme.pdf

5. HiJack++.  Port the HiJack system (currently running on a TI MSP430
   processor and iPhone handset) onto Android or Windows Mobile (of
   course we'll provide the phones), using the Cortex-M0.  See the
   following page for some more information:

   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/projects/hijack

6. AutoWitness Tag Sensors. Integrate an ARM microcontroller, GPRS
   radio, flash memory, accelerometer/gyroscope, vibration sensors,
   and battery into the smallest possible form factor and make the
   system draw practically zero power when sitting still.  This
   design, if successful, will be used in Memphis, TN to catch thieves
   in the act.  Much of the back-end software already exists so the
   main challenge here is to get to a viable platform.  See the
   following paper for some additional details:

   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/pubs/papers/guha10autotrack.pdf

7. Gemini Power Meter.  Design and implement a working power meter
   that decouples the current and voltage sense channels and recombines
   them wirelessly.  This project will involve integrating a radio,
   ARM microcontroller, timer subsystem, network time synchronization
   protocol, and an AC power metering chip.  A good overview of the
   system is available at the following url:

   http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/pubs/papers/schmid10meter.pdf

8. Ice Skating Robot.  Make a robot that can ice skate and do
   pirouettes.  Extra credit for a robot that can do a triple
   lutz/double toe loop.  No seriously.  Think you can pull this off?
   Automatic A+ (and maybe a PhD too), but it has to work.