Capstone Design | University at Albany

Developing Innovative Technologies to Apply in the Real-World

Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Jonathan Muckell providing feedback to students in his 2019 Senior Capstone Design class. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)
Electrical and Computer Engineering students in the 2019 class worked on four projects that were presented at the CREATE symposium on April 10, 2019, at the Empire State Plaza. (photo by Patrick Dodson)

As part of the degree requirements for the BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, seniors partner with outside agencies or university researchers to develop an innovative technology that could be applied in a real-world setting.

This multi-semester project begins in the fall semester when teams of students perform an in-depth evaluation of a problem, engage in background research and brainstorm technical solutions and requirements. The course forces an integration of multiple highly valuable skills, revolving around a real-world project and drawing upon knowledge attained in previous courses. To be successful, the students must work as a team, apply technical writing or oral presentation skills, all while working on a project that contributes to a solution to a real-world problem. This is in keeping with our college mission of “Science in Service to Society.”

The Class of 2018 was the first class in the BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering program to complete the capstone design course, which is now in its third year. Read below about the creative technologies our student engineers devised to meet specific practical needs of external stakeholders and the people they serve.

2018

In the 2017-18 academic year, four engineering seniors developed a tool to help persons with disabilities gain employment by providing reminders and streamlining time management. They dubbed their project “Bee Notified,” in recognition of the industrious creatures that, despite their size, are remarkable workers. Their project was supported by the New York State Industries for the Disabled (NYSID) and was completed in collaboration with the local non-profit Living Resources.

NYSID sponsors university projects through their CREATE (Cultivating Resources for Employment with Assistive TEchnology) program, which incentivizes student engineering projects that promote employment and vocational opportunities for people with disabilities. The project culminates with a symposium and competition consisting of universities across New York State. The top three projects at the competition are awarded $15,000, $10,000, and $5,000, respectively.

Despite being a brand-new engineering department and the first-time having the University at Albany represented at the competition, ECE seniors Andrew Boggio-Dandry, Anthony Castro, Egzon Shehu, and Steven Yoo won 3rd place, and a prize of five thousand dollars.

Bee Notified: Assisting Disabled New Yorkers’ Transition to Independent Living

Jennifer Mainello of Living Resources posing with Bee Notified app — Jennifer Mainello of Living Resources and team member Anthony Castro pose with the Bee Notified app and Apple Watch companion

Based on discussions with Living Resources (LR), the team developed an Apple Watch application that employs a geolocation-based calendar, location assistance, and two-way communication with LR administrators to help PWDs manage their time and schedules. The system includes an iPhone application, its Apple Watch companion, an interactive web portal, and additional back-end functionality.

2019

The 2019 class of Electrical and Computer Engineering seniors followed in the footsteps of the previous year’s class, using the capstone design project to develop innovative technology that would facilitate employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities.

The capstone project learning experience expanded in the 2018-19 academic year with four teams consisting of 12 students engaged in the CREATE competition and working with multiple external stakeholders. These teams worked on a range of problems, including making inventory management and packing systems jobs more accessible to individuals with disabilities, collaborating with a robotics company on an experimental service robot that might one day be able to monitor the health and safety of disabled workers, and extending the Bee Notified project from the previous year. The stakeholder on the last project (Living Resources) has expressed strong interest in commercializing the student-developed product.

Bee Notified: A Cross-Platform Location-based Scheduling, Messaging, and Alerts Application for PWDs

The team made advancements on the work started in the previous year and also created a new foundation for Bee Notified that will allow future teams to get acquainted with the overall structure of the application at a greater pace. The core contribution of this project was to develop a cross-platform mobile application for enhanced usability and accessibility. Supported devices include all mobile devices with the Android operating system (tablets, phones, and smart watches), a subset of mobile devices with iOS (iPhones and iPads), and all Windows 10 devices (PC’s, tablets, and phones).

E-Misty Bot: Service Robot to Detect and Mitigate Emotional Distress in the Employees with Disabilities

Some workers with disabilities have an inability to handle emotional stress and need a caregiver or supervisor to help them manage before escalation can adversely affect other workers. Using an open source robot donated by Misty Robotics, Inc., the team developed a service robot (Misty) to assist PWDs in dealing with emotional stress by prompting the appropriate response for a specific individual and their specific emotion. Misty was able to successfully detect the emotion of individuals in her memory and play the appropriate audio file to calm them down while stationary.

The project stakeholder, Center for Disability Services (CDS), sponsored two teams of students to develop specific aspects of automating their warehouse inventory system. The teams’ objectives were to design an inventory management system in the CDS warehouse that would dramatically reduce time spent on tracking, packing, and shipping inventory, allow for more reliable data intake, and utilize simplicity in order to open up job opportunities for PWDs.

palletPal: A Pallet Tracking System to Improve Employment for Disabled Workers in New York State

The team developed a web application dedicated to the stakeholder, which is integrated with a database to keep it simple for the users. The web app allows users to add, remove or check pallets in the system. When the user checks the inventory, the tablet’s camera opens in order to scan all the existing QR codes in the warehouse, checking off all the items in the database that were scanned during the single session, and sends a report to the supervisor updating that person on the items that have been checked and not checked.