Project ideas and advice

Ideas

The following ideas have been provided by faculty members or companies, and may (or may not) become an approved project. Contact the person listed for each project to learn more about it.

• Christmas Yard Decorations:  Every year more and more yard decorations are based on electronic components.  An older example I have seen is a Santa Claus shooting basketball (Larry Otis and Sharon Fanning’s yard).  What about Mary putting Jesus in a manager?  What about Shepherds coming to the manager?  Animals raising and lowering their head, making sounds, etc.?  Maybe this is scalable in that you could start with some characters (Mary, Joseph, Jesus) and “sell” optional animals, shepherds, and wise men; just need to “plug in” more characters.  You create something unique and interesting, it will sell.  Market-up for uniqueness in this market is high.  You could focus on Halloween decorations, if dark and scary is your preference. An earlier senior design project like this is Holiday Light Show. Contact: Dr. Robert Moorhead.

• Trailer Hitch Art / Animation / Distractions:  This sector would force you to learn about voltage and current from that plug / wire near the hitch, as well as power and energy.  Probably larger volume, lower cost product than yard decorations.  How about a “large” MSU sign that flashes M S U and plays the fight song?  A Christmas ornament that has reindeer flying in a semicircle while playing a Christmas song?  A Christmas tree that lights up random colored lights, tinsel, and plays bells?  Sounds simple, but you’d want to “road test” extensively for durability, so get final prototype done by end of SD 1. Contact: Dr. Robert Moorhead.

• Winston Plywood & Veneer – Block Conditioning Water Storage Pit Cleaning Package. Control 2-axis gantry crane system to maneuver a 600 GPM pump's intake hose around a water storage pit, avoiding submerged obstacles while monitoring pump flow and solids content. Contact: Dr. Jones.

• Strain gauge amplifier – Create an amplifier for a strain gauge capable of operation up to 100 kHz, and adjustable sensitivity of up to 1000 X. This project requires students comfortable with analog electrical design. Contact: Dr. Jones.

• Design an autonomous snake/fish-like robot that is able to survey underwater, which is similar to Eelume: https://eelume.com/.  Contact: Dr. Bo Tang.

• Sensors for smart food manufacturing. Temperature and flow sensors to remotely monitor and control manufacturing processes  (e.g., active fermentation, cold crashing status). Contact: Dr. Jean Mohammadi-Aragh.

• Artificial Intelligence RC Car Racing – Develop a self-driving car with sensors (camera, LiDAR, GPS etc.). MSU CAVS (Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems) research facility has an RC racetrack to test the prototype.  Look at this example: https://caipeide.site/autorace-dirl/ and https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/diy-ai-race. Contact: Dr. Dabbiru at: lalitha@cavs.msstate.edu.

• Obstacle and track detection in autonomous cars – The RC car should be able to detect the obstacles for smooth and efficient navigation. It should be able to calculate the distance from the obstacle and should stay within the lines of the track. MSU CAVS (Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems) research facility has an RC racetrack to test the prototype. Look at this example: https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/diy-ai-race. Contact: Dr. Dabbiru at: lalitha@cavs.msstate.edu.

• A re-designed or re-created version of https://www.propelleraero.com/aeropoints - Dr. Robert Moorhead

• Aerial Drone Charging via Power line: This is a sponsored project by a new startup looking to innovate in the field of drone technology and electric utilities. Using a known voltage gradient, caused by the electric field of an energized overhead conductor, recharge an aerial drone. Essentially the team should look to take advantage of placing two ends of their charging probes at a set physical distance within a known electric field gradient. This would enable an aerial drone to hang from the conductor, recharge, then continue on with its activity. The aerial drone must be able to fly near and within a high voltage environment (account for noise and spurious voltages within the actual drone), and charge itself from a suspended high voltage conductor. Contact: Dr. Dabbiru, lalitha@cavs.msstate.edu

• Michael Jaffe is a faculty member at the vet school, and worked with a senior design team to create a dog vest. He has several projects (measuring head bob in dogs, etc.) that might make good senior design projects. Contact: mhj95@msstate.edu

• Therapeutic lighting : Light panels in office settings that display various natural scenes in the offices.  Some examples are: fish tanks with moving fish, active snowfall on mountains etc.  Contact: Chaomin Luo at chaomin.luo@ece.msstate.edu

• Safety Bear: Safety bear is a device to help prevent parents from leaving small children in cars. The general idea is that the bear is hung on a rear view mirror and it reminds parents (by beeping / talking) their child is in the car. There’s also a proximity sensor and remote that can send a signal if a parent gets too far from the car without deactivating the bear. The inventors are Mr. Henry and Ms. Betsy Liddell, who will give the design specifications. Contact  Dr. Dabbiru at: lalitha@cavs.msstate.edu to meet with the client (This project was completed and delivered in 2022 by a senior design team).

• Modify battery-operated ride-on toy vehicles (such as Go Baby Go cars https://www.yourcpf.org/cpproduct/go-baby-go-the-ultimate-toy-hack /, Power Wheels, Barbie cars, etc.) to make them more accessible to children with disabilities.

• Modify electric battery-operated ride-on toy vehicles to accommodate older children (5 - 11 years old) with disabilities; allow these older children the enjoyment and autonomy that comes from navigating toy ride-on vehicles while ensuring their safety and accessibility (i.e., many currently existing cars are geared toward very young, preschool-aged children)

• Use virtual reality to train children with disabilities to learn how to maneuver power chairs; similar to “driver’s ed” courses for children to learn to manipulate power chairs before they graduate to actual chairs that weigh hundreds of pounds and can be unwieldy at first; training courses would need to be fun and engaging—e.g., obstacle courses, crowded street fair settings, dinosaurs/space aliens/etc.

• Use virtual reality for children with disabilities to educate or entertain themselves (e.g., perhaps set in interesting cities that children could “explore,” similar to training routes you might see in gyms for people using treadmills or stationary bikes)

• Monitor/sense the position of children or adults with disabilities on a bed or chair by adding some features to already existing pressure-sensing cushions (the cushions will be provided by T.K. Martin Center). For example, cushions should sense when a user is seated on them for an extended period and communicate through app alerts to caregivers that the user should be repositioned/chair tilted/etc. to prevent injuries such as bed sores. 

• Robotic assistant with household or business tasks. Contact: Ivy Kelly, CSPIRE.

• Use virtual reality (VR) in physical / mental therapy. Contact: Ivy Kelly, CSPIRE.

• Virtual storefront for training and/or support. For example: to check if the network is working by monitoring the LEDs using the camera system and notify. Contact: Ivy Kelly, CSPIRE.

• Inspect huge transformers with a robot that would inspect the core, windings, check oil etc. with cameras. The transformers are very hot >100° C. Contact: Chris Litton, Southern Company / Mississippi Power.

• Check oil level externally on tanks of electric transformer without removing fill plug.  This is the project with Howard Power Company, MS. Contact: Dr. Lalitha Dabbiru (ld212@msstate.edu) and Shelby Walters of Howard Power.

• Safety bracelet for children with disabilities: when the bracelet gets wet, it sounds an alarm to let people in the house know to check on the child if they got into a pool or any body of water. There used to be a product called "safety turtle" and they closed this company during covid. This device can also be used for pets. Contact: Dr. Lalitha Dabbiru (ld212@msstate.edu) 

• A sound detector system that detects sounds (based on user preference like some birds or can be used for search and rescue). The device should identify specific sounds and translate into data and  provide the geographic location. An app development is needed that will relay all the information. Contact: Dr. Lalitha Dabbiru (ld212@msstate.edu) or the client Mr. Joe Morgan <joemorgan@jmcoservices.com>. A patent will be filed after project completion.

• Build a virtual reality simulator to maneuver powered and manual wheelchairs to improve mobility of people with disabilities. Contact: Dr. Lalitha Dabbiru (ld212@msstate.edu) 

• Build a customizable vehicle (Sedan/ SUV) driving simulator for persons with disabilities and different cognitive abilities. Contact: Dr. Lalitha Dabbiru (ld212@msstate.edu) 

• Submit your project to the IEEE Communications Society student competition!

To prepare for Senior Design I:

1. Attend the ECE open house and ask at least one current senior design team for their advice. Include a one-paragraph summary of what you learned in your project proposal.

2. Form a team of 4-5 members. Ask your friends in the ECE department who plan to start senior design at the same time as you -- start forming your team early! You can also post on a message board. For those without a team or with a partial team, I'll help teams self-form on the first day of class.

Advice

In addition to advice on the Introduction to Senior Design page, a good senior design project should:

• Be interesting. You’re going to spend an incredible amount of time on your project; pick something that you and your entire team want to work on.

• Match your team’s skill set. A team unfamiliar with vacuum tubes should avoid a project that focuses on vacuum tubes.

• Be unique. If the product you describe already exists, your proposal should differentiate your idea from what’s already available. Look through the past and present projects list on the senior design website, and search the web for your proposed project. Note that older projects may no longer be challenging as technology advances! Bad example: the keyboard tutor will light up LEDs on a piano keyboard to help students learn to play. (This already exists.)

• Contain electrical engineering components. If your team includes CpEs, your project should contain a computer engineering component. If your solution involves writing code for off-the-shelf hardware, it doesn’t qualify. Example: a football parking drone will use a downward-facing camera to find open parking spots, then transmit these to a parking app to sell the spaces.

• Be a product that solves a real-world problem. A proposal cannot simply explore technology X; it must use technology X in the design of a product.

• Be of reasonable difficulty. Design something more complex than a pencil sharpener, but avoid research projects. Bad example: design the next Mars lander (too complex).

• Be realizable. Bad example: build a wallet finder that contains GPS and a cell phone data connection and fits in a wallet. (You can’t put all these components in a small package; it won’t have sufficient battery life.)

• Be prototypable, usually on a solderless protoboard. Your team must demonstrate a working prototype at the end of Senior Design I.

• Be specific. The high-level project description should clearly state the overall purpose of your product. The detailed software and hardware description should present a clear vision of how the project will be accomplished, without specifying implementation details. Bad example: the project will use an Arduino and an ESP8266 WiFi module to interface with an Android app (these are implementation decisions).