On June 3, 2023, the ZJUI 2023 Senior Design Exhibition was held in the Multimedia Hall of the International Campus, with 2023 undergraduate students from Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering participating in the exhibition. Prof. Rashid Bashir, Dean of the Grainger College of Engineering, Prof. Philip Krein, Co-Director of ZJU-UIUC Joint Research Center and member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Prof. Bruce Hajek, Head of the ECE Department, Prof. Bill Spencer, Professor and Newmark Endowed Chair of CEE Department, Foreign Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Prof. Erol Tutumluer, Director of International Programs of CEE Department, visited the exhibition, accompanied by Prof. Der-Horng Lee, Dean of ZJUI, Prof. Jin Jianming, Executive Dean of ZJUI, Prof. Ma Hao, Vice Dean of ZJUI, representatives of faculty members and students, as well as parents of senior students, participated in the exhibition.

 

 

 

The senior design exhibition is a display of excellent works from the senior design course (ECE445/ME 470 Senior Design), with a total of 7 teams participating. At the exhibition site, students presented and demonstrated their project from topic selection, solution, technical direction, and success criteria. The UIUC delegation participating in the exhibition asked questions from multiple perspectives on the topic selection, solutions, technical details, practical significance, and other aspects of the projects, and provided suggestions and more directions for thinking.

 

ECE445 / ME 470 Senior Design was a course offered in the spring semester of 2023, with 150 senior students enrolled. ZJUI Assistant Professors Mark Butala, Timothy Lee, and UIUC faculty member Professor Arne Fliflet, Rakesh Kuma, Chenhui Shao were the instructors. The course focuses on cross-disciplinary integration, requiring students majoring in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering to form teams freely, and ensuring that all teams are cross-disciplinary. This not only broadens students' knowledge, but also cultivates a broader engineering perspective, greatly enhancing their ability to innovate and integrate across disciplines. Through senior design courses, students will further exercise their leadership and teamwork skills, and become familiar with the operation and solution of real engineering problems.

 

 

 

All those innovative design projects reflect the brilliant results generated by the convergence and cooperation of different programs; The thrilling presentations of student teams also fully reflects the comprehensive quality and innovative ability of ZJUI students.

 

 

The UIUC delegation highly praised the innovative achievements and efforts made by ZJUI students and hoped that they can continuously unleash more enthusiastic creative sparks in the future.

 

In all the senior design projects, several teams received special recognition: “An Intelligent Assistant Using Sign Language” won the Best Integrated Project Award. “Digital Controlled LED Rotating Display System” won the Most Commercially Viable Project Award. “ML-based Weather Forecast on Raspberry Pi” won the Best Interdisciplinary Project Award. “Robotic T-Shirt Launcher Mark II” won the Best Mechanically Designed Award. “High Noon Sheriff Robot” won the Instructor's Choice Award.

 

 

 

 

Best Interdisciplinary

ML-based Weather Forecast on Raspberry Pi

Fu Zheyu, Qi Zhenting, Chen Xuanyu, Yuan Chenzhi

 

Weather forecasting is crucial in our daily lives. It allows us to make proper plans and get prepared for extreme conditions in advance. However, meteorologists always get it wrong half of the time. To overcome the limitations of traditional weather forecasting, machine learning models have become increasingly important in weather forecasting. Building our own weather forecast ML system is a perfect idea for us to analyze vast amounts of area data and generate more accurate and timely weather predictions on the go in our surrounding areas.

 

A solution generated by Fu Zheyu’s team mainly consists of two parts. For weather measurement and data collection, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure sensors are considered the main components. A machine learning-based algorithm is to be applied for data analysis and weather predictions. This weather forecasting system can accurately collect climate data such as temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure, and can predict weather conditions in real-time through machine learning algorithms.

 

 

 

 

Best Integrated

An Intelligent Assistant Using Sign Language

Liu Hanwen, Zhou Yike, Lou Haina, Chen Qianzhong

 

Recently, smart home accessories are more and more common in people's home. A center, which is usually a speaker with voice user interface, is needed to control private smart home accessories. But an interactive speaker may not be the most ideal for people who are hard to speak or hear. Therefore, Liu Hanwen’s team aim to develop an intelligent assistant using sign language, which can understand sign languages, interact with people, and act as a real assistant.

 

 

 

The bionic hand can move free and fluently as designed. The movement of single joint of the finger does not interrupt or be interrupted by other movements. The durability and reliability of the bionic hand is achieved. Also, the edge computing platform they choose have high performance when running the dynamic gesture recognition model, and their machine could recognize different sign language immediately and react with corresponding gestures without obvious delay.

 

 

 

Best Mechanically Designed

Robotic T-Shirt Launcher Mark II

Xiao Ziyu, Guo Moyang, Ding Hao, Guo Yixiang

 

Xiao Ziyu’s team has identified a problem with the launcher project that was completed last year, which only included a single-shot launcher that required manual reloading and could only adjust the angle and direction automatically. To address this issue, their team has proposed an improved design that is a fully automated system capable of launching multiple T-shirts by itself, without manual reloading. Their proposed design also includes more advanced features, such as the ability to adjust the trajectory of the launch. In addition, they build it into a wearable device that could be carried on the shoulders.

 

 

The launcher can launch T-shirts accurately and consistently at a controlled angle and velocity, and the entire launch process and angle control can be initiated and controlled by a single button. Also, the launcher is designed with safety mechanisms, such as emergency stop buttons, to prevent accidents or injuries.

 

 

 

Instructor's Choice

High Noon Sheriff Robot

Zhang Youcheng, Xu Yuan, Shao Shuting, Pan Yilve

 

Nowadays, with global public safety issues facing severe challenges, the security upgrade of public places urgently needs to be improved. Inspired by the American western movies, Zhang Youcheng’s team has developed a robot that can detect potential threats and pull out weapons first in order to warn the criminal to abandon the crime or use non-lethal weapons to take him down if he continues to pull out his gun.

 

 

In order to achieve effective protection in a legal manner, they proposed the idea of safety robots, which can quickly detect dangerous individuals and fire non-lethal ammunition to prevent dangerous events. This type of robot can move quickly and open weapons at the first time when human life and health are threatened and carry out accurate shooting. If the opponent surrenders, the robot will return the gun to its original position.

 

 

Most Commercializable

Digital Controlled LED Rotating Display System

Fu Guanshujie, Shen Keyi, Jin Yichi, Yuan Chentai

 

Fu Guanshujie’s team aim at developing a digital controlled LED rotating display system, where a servo motor is controlled to drive the stick with one row of LED to do circular rotation. By visual persistence phenomenon, any images and strings can be displayed with a rotating LED array. However, there are some common issues to be solved. First, the images or strings to be displayed are pre-defined and cannot be changed in a real-time way. Second, the wired connection between some components may limit the rotation behavior, and harm the quality of display.

 

 

 

 

The connection between LEDs, control circuit, motor and other components should be simple but firm enough to suppose good display and high-speed rotation. Moreover, there is another part to handle users’ input and communicate with the display part via Bluetooth to update images in a real-time and wireless way. In the system, the motor can drive the LED array and any necessary components to rotate stably and safely, guaranteeing that the LED array is under real-time control and responds rapidly.

 

 

Senior Design (ECE445/ME 470 Senior Design) is a comprehensive course that examines students' writing ability, teamwork ability, expression ability, and most importantly, their ability to comprehensively apply the theories, knowledge, and skills they have learned to solve practical problems. In the course, students practiced deep cross-disciplinary teamwork. This is an important exploration and practice of ZJUI in leading new engineering concepts, cultivating comprehensive and composite international engineering elites, and achieving an innovative engineering education organization that embraces multidisciplinary interaction.