EECS 373 Fall 2015 Research Projects Prabal Dutta Background: There are lots of interesting embedded systems out there that researchers and educators could use but either don't have the skills or time to actually design and build. However, some of you may have the time and skills, especially during or after 373, to create such things. We'd like to encourage that by identifying some project opportunities. Most of these may not seem as cool as building a small Segwey or a quadcopter. On the other hand, they are quite useful for addressing a range of research or other 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. These projects can 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 experience and visibility. This term, we have the following projects available: 1. Internet of Shoes: The objective of this project is to develop different interactive shoelace prototypes that can easily be threaded in a shoe or tied around feet or arms. Each shoelace consists of a transceiver and a custom-designed microcontroller unit with two RGB LED’s that are coupled with a flexible plastic fiber that serves as a light guide and shoelace. All components are powered with a miniature battery and sit in a small weatherproof and easy to attach plastic enclosure. The color and frequency of each transmitted light wave can be programmed, for example, to be delayed related to the signal strength or reversely related to it. Pressing a button on the shoelace triggers a light wave that takes hold of the participating crowd. The system can be set to choose only a few participants at once (e.g. indicated by a blinking light) to trigger a light wave. Further, when, for example, a green and a red light wave interfere, the resulting light wave can be programmed to turn yellow. These are just some of the programming ideas that we want to use to explore at the interaction and dynamic of larger crowds participating in this experimental light installation. See the following for images: http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/teaching/eecs373/projects/IoT-shoes-1.png http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/teaching/eecs373/projects/IoT-shoes-2.png 2. Doorjamb: An recent research paper proposed "Doorjamb," a system for unobtrusive room-level tracking of people in homes using doorway sensors. From the paper's abstract: "Indoor tracking systems will be an essential part of the home of the future, enabling location-aware and individually-tailored services. However, today there are no tracking solutions that are practical for 'every day' use in the home. In this paper, we introduce the Doorjamb tracking system that uses ultrasonic range finders mounted above each doorway, pointed downward to sense people as they walk through the doorway. The system differentiates people by measuring their heights, infers their walking direction using signal processing, and identifies their room locations based on the sequence of doorways through which they pass. Doorjamb provides room-level tracking without requiring any user participation, wearable devices, privacy intrusive sensors, or high-cost sensors." The goal of this project is to design a version of doorjamb using the UM ATUM or NUCLEUM system, generate the hardware and software needed to be able to build several of these systems, and evaluate the quality of the sensor itself. Doorjamb paper: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~whitehouse/research/buildingEnergy/hnat12doorjamb.pdf ATUM module: http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum.pdf http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum.jpg http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum_a_2014-04-28.zip ATUM breakout board: http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout.pdf http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout.jpg http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout_a_2014-06-04.zip 3. Ambient Smoke Detector: This projects leverages a new sensor that can detect the chemicals released into the air in the presence of cigarette or marijuana smoke. The project goal is to integrate these sensors with a microcontroller and Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) radio that would allow take readings periodically, store them locally on flash memory, and transmit them over a WiFi radio, all using the Intel Edison platform.