2012 Senior Projects
iPedago – Personal Learning System
Team
OWLS
Members
Anthony Barone
Ryan Clough
Chris Erardi
Colin Horak
Erwins Milord
Sponsor
Netsmartz, LLC
Faculty Coach
Stephanie Ludi
Synopsis
iPedago is an organizational learning tool to promote self education and content reinforcement. It’s targeted towards students but with the flexibility to work with any individual who wishes to research a new topic. Users can import content from a variety of different sources and file types. The application allows users to create their own questions and answers to place on virtual flash cards which can be revisited at anytime. The system can optionally quiz the user at random times to ensure comprehension of the material.
Users can import resources and extrapolate important bits of information to help summarize the material. They also have the ability to highlight snippets of text for quick recall later on and even create a glossary of key terms and definitions automatically. iPedago has a coach to help guide the user through the process of building their topic project(s).
Many commercially available digital learning systems are targeted towards specific subjects or disciplines. This product, on the other hand, has the flexibility to assist with self-learning for any desired subject. In addition, once a project is published by an iPedago user, it can be distributed amongst other users interested in learning the same topic across the world.
Website
OWLS
Central Affinage Facility Production System
Team
Cheddar Luck Next Time
Members
Christopher Cowdery-Corvan
Daniel Joseph
Miles Malerba
Sherman Lee
John Van Gundel
Sponsor
Wegmans Food Markets
Faculty Coach
Kenn Martinez
Synopsis
The team will design and implement a system that will track different types of cheeses as they arrive at the warehouse, go through aging and value add processes, and finally leave the warehouse. The system will be able to determine how much of a given cheese is scheduled to be available on any given day. Using this information, employees will be able to accelerate the process or order more cheese as necessary. The system will not attempt to make these decisions for the employees, it will only give them the necessary information to make the decision. The acceleration and value adding procedures varies from cheese to cheese, so the system must be able to track different types of cheeses independently.The system will not need to interface with any other systems directly, but will be able to input and output flat files. The format of these files will need to be proposed by the team and agreed on by all parties, however, the system shall use Wegmans’ product IDs and other information to make the system easier to integrate in the future.In addition the team will be responsible for determining the best method of physically tracking the cheese as it moves through the warehouse (e.g. barcode scanning, RFIDs, etc.)
Website
Cheddar Luck Next Time
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
A Flight Simulator for Pilot Training: Flying Tiger Phase I
Team
Foxtrot Tango
Members
Corey Engelman
Mark Kerbel
Conlan Wesson
Brett Snare
Geoff Carlson
Sponsor
Moog, Inc/RIT Mechanical Engineering Department
Faculty Coach
Tom Reichlmayr
Synopsis
Moog Inc. is a corporation that designs and manufactures fluid control systems for various industries worldwide. The aviation branch of East Aurora, NY will be sponsoring a multi-disciplinary senior project at RIT in which students will be developing a flight simulator. The simulator will be used for customer demonstrations to help sell Moog systems. Our software engineering team will be responsible for the visual content displayed in the flight simulator. Our system will receive information from a system called the dSPACE controller and will generate visual feedback in the form of a virtual cockpit window and instrument display. The dSPACE controller will be developed by Moog and acts as a façade between the hardware inputs and our software package. The graphical output will be rendered using flight simulation software that is already available. The instrumentation display will be created based off of the actual physical instruments found in the aircraft being converted in to a flight simulator.
Website
Foxtrot Tango
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Flowrider II - Online Program Flowchart, Advising, and Scheduling System
Team
Flowriders
Members
Peter Janak
Travis Lazar
Eric Herman
Chris Johnson
Sponsor
RIT Department of Software Engineering and Department of Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Coach
Daniel Krutz
Synopsis
The Online Flowchart Advising and Scheduling System is designed to move the current paper only advising system to an online system. The system is split into two sub systems: the advising portion and the curriculum generation portion. The curriculum generation portion allows department administers to create the course curriculum for a particular year. The curriculums will be version-able so they can carry over from year to year or be changed. The advising portion will allow students and advising staff to create and experiment with different plans. These plans can be saved for later use. While the advising staff is working with students, they will be able to view their plans in both flowchart and spreadsheet form. The advising system can use these saved plans as a data source to predict what courses will need to be offered and how many seats will need to be available. The system will also provide a high degree of end-user configurability to define courses, programs, and display formats. The second half of this project will improve upon what was previously completed, and also add additional functionality. The major focus will be on assisting the transition between quarters and semesters. To help accomplish this, student program records will be exportable into different formats, including Individual Advising Plans. Plans will be made for the production deployment on ITS systems as well as future maintenance.
Website
Flowriders
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Virtual Industrial Facility - Simulated Environmental, Health & Safety Assessment
Team
PUMA
Members
Rob Close
Chris Hinkel
James Schaefer
Zachary Sproul
Sponsor
RIT Civil Engineering Technology, Environmental Management & Safety Department
Faculty Coach
Donald Boyd
Synopsis
Team PUMA is to design a web-based application where students enrolled in environmental, health and safety management courses may tour a virtual facility and interview workers. Students will identify environmental aspects and impacts, as well as occupational health and safety hazards and risks, based on the information they gather about the activities of the simulated facility through their interviews with facility personnel. Potentially, students may also be able to observe EHS concerns in the virtual environment. Students will work either individually or in teams to turn in a completed EHS report. The professor of the course may log in to view and evaluate the students’ completed reports, to group students into project teams, and to create or modify virtual facility scenarios. The application will assist in the professor’s evaluation of students’ reports. Team PUMA will provide the finished project, the documentation for operating the system, and other relevant project deliverables to the faculty advisor and the project sponsors. This project should be considered by the project sponsors and students taking the course to be superior to the current workbook system.
Website
PUMA
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
GIS Optimized Labor Scheduling and Tracking Mobile Application
Team
Openstache
Members
Christopher Hossenlopp
Benjamin Nicholas
Mitchell Skiba
Michael Nuzzo
Sponsor
Paychex Inc.
Faculty Coach
Ryan Schneider
Synopsis
The Paychex Mobile Clock-In System project is the start of a prototype of a location aware time tracking system. The clients for the system will be small businesses, and the users will typically be their employees. The system will allow employees to clock-in on site with the location data via a cross platform mobile application. This allows managers to more easily track how long their employees take to perform their work via a web application. The development team will be responsible for developing the cross platform mobile punch-clock app, manager web app, and robust server side components. An additional goal is to design the system so that Paychex can continue to evolve the application and easily incorporate it into their mobile platform offering.
Website
Openstache
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Framework for Interactive Video Vignettes
Team
LivePhoto
Members
Rohit Garg
Brian Soulliard
Gordon Toth
Brian Wyant
Sponsor
RIT Physics Department
Faculty Coach
Donald Boyd
Synopsis
The idea behind this project is to enable the creation of interactive video vignettes that can be deployed as a learning tool for physics subjects. The video analysis activities will involve inputting data points onto a video or frame with a cursor. In addition to such vignettes, the project shall support user input in the form of multiple choice answers and will also allow for the collection of usage data as desired. An example of an interactive video vignette can be found at http://teamworks.rit.edu/~ball/LP-website.php Project Goals and ObjectivesThe primary goals of the project are defined as the following: To investigate the most suitable technology for implementation of the vignettes To enable the creation of interactive video vignettes, featuring: Accurate frame-by-frame traversal of video footage Cursor-based interaction with graphic overlays on frames of a video Interactive data analysis and reporting tools such as graphs and charts Recording certain statistics concerning the use of these video vignettes Support for closed captions Support for major mobile and computer platforms Support for web-based vignettes with no installations or downloads necessary Ability to view a series of pages interspersed with text and quiz questions.
Website
LivePhoto
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Heads Up Display on Android
Team
HUDroid
Members
Kenton Christian
Sam Owen
Avezou Petit Frere
Robert Turcotte
Colin Bennett
Sponsor
Harris RF Communications
Faculty Coach
Ryan Schneider
Synopsis
Harris RF Communications is the leading global supplier of secure radio communications. This includes tactical communication networks and high-grade embedded encryption solutions. These products are used by military, public safety, government, and commercial customers.The goal of this project is to build upon the SAndroid project, which was created as a previous Software Engineering senior project. SAndroid provides services such as TacChat, SA proximity, and Cursor on Target. Our project will use these services in conjunction with other information provided by the Android phone, such as current location and orientation. These features will act as a Heads-Up Display (HUD) which overlays video captured from devices to provide augmented reality functionality. The end result of the project is an Android application, so the video feed will generally be coming from the phone’s camera.The Augmented Reality portions will utilize existing libraries - either Qualcomm’s AR library, or the one available through Google.
Website
HUDroid
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
CARS Faculty Course Assignment and Scheduling System
Team
Skyline
Members
Corey Maher
Kevin Lakotko
Matthew Bialek
Yin Poon
Sponsor
RIT GCCIS
Faculty Coach
Michael Lutz
Synopsis
Most departments at the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at RIT use a software application to plan course offerings. This application is called the Course Assignment and Request System (CARS) and is capable of planning what courses are offered as well as when each course is offered, what room it is offered in, and which faculty member will teach it. Every department has a different set of procedures that is used to plan course offerings. Nevertheless, many choose to use CARS to aid this process.The general users for this tool are department chairmen, administrators, faculty, and staff.CARS provides a mechanism for users to easily access and arrange information in a simple manner. However there are flaws in the current system that need to be addressed, as these flaws can cause serious problems.A new version of CARS will be designed and developed based on the current implementation. It will address many of the imperfections that currently exist, such as security holes, lack of user input validation, lack of audit trails and lack of support for the new semester system. In addition, the system architecture will be redesigned to improve its security, extensibility, scalability and usability.
Website
Skyline
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Evaluation System v2
Team
LMNO
Members
Jonathon Leight
Trevin Maerten
Noel Nacion
John O'Connor
Sponsor
RIT Co-op and Career Services
Faculty Coach
Daniel Krutz
Synopsis
LMNO will be reworking the existing co-op evaluation forms used by students and faculty at RIT and by the employers of the students. The existing system has garnered negative comments from users due to slow response times, time-outs, and general lack of usability. We wish to address these concerns in our re-working as well as making the system more cohesive, integrating the added functionality with the core system. Our intention is to create a far more positive experience for the users; quicker submissions, intuitive layout, quick editing within the browser window, and reliable automation tools for sending notifications. During the 20 week process, we will review and familiarize ourselves with the functionality of the existing system and use it as a model for the new system. We will have access to old data for testing purposes and full admin abilities to learn the ins and outs of the system. Certain team members may have less familiarity with the programming language (Python / C#) or the back-end of the co-op evaluation process, creating a learning curve early in the first quarter. Weekly meetings with our project sponsor, Jim Bondi, will occur on Thursdays at 4pm, occasionally including our coach, Daniel Krutz, or any RIT faculty that would like to share their thoughts on the system.
Website
LMNO
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
360 Degree Survey
Team
Phalanx
Members
Phil Huge
Chris Kehler
Henryk Tunguz-Zawislak
Sponsor
RIT Saunders College of Business
Faculty Coach
Lihua Xu/Jim Vallino
Synopsis
360 surveys are used to gather feedback about individuals in an organization from various sources, including managers, peers, subordinates, customers, and the individuals themselves. The results of each survey are provided to the individual with the intent that he or she will continue exhibiting strengths while improving upon weaknesses. The aggregate survey results of an organization are used to draw larger conclusions about, and subsequently improve, the organization as a whole.The 360 survey software project will deliver a web application for creating custom 360 surveys. Users will be able to select those who are rating and those being rated, complete surveys, analyze results of individual surveys and aggregations from several surveys, and export raw data for further analysis. The final web application will improve upon existing competitors by allowing survey feedback to be customized, offering an easy-to-use web interface that fits the needs of experts and novices alike, visualizing survey data in a more informative and statistically useful format, calculating commonly-used statistics, and providing these features at a low cost.
Website
Phalanx
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
School Volunteer Management Interface
Team
Lunchbox
Members
Bardh Jahjaga
Evan Williams
Martin Marks
Brian Lee
Sponsor
Brockport Central School District
Faculty Coach
Kenn Martinez
Synopsis
This project will ultimately result in a website that will optimize the use of volunteers and community resources across the nation. The purpose is to optimize the use of the volunteers as a way of mitigating the impact of budget cuts, strengthening community ties and freeing up staff from the laborious process of matching jobs to volunteers. The site will accommodate three types of users: Posters, Helpers and Volunteer Coordinators. Posters are pre-approved administrative figures that are in search of volunteers for a certain need. Helpers are community-approved volunteers who are looking to contribute volunteer hours of service or donations. Helpers will be able to print a report detailing their volunteer history. Volunteer Coordinators are volunteers who are aware of the communities volunteering rules and any legal criteria for posted needs; they are also responsible for approving or rejecting need requests, as well as creating/approving user accounts. The system will give users the opportunity to provide feedback on the task and on the volunteers who completed the task. The first live test of the website will be administered at the Brockport Central School District.
Website
Lunchbox
Technical Report:
Download Technical Report
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Registry
Team
Out By 5
Members
Eric Thompson
Alex Howland
Corey Batten
Alex Kozak
Sponsor
US Department of Veterans Affairs
Faculty Coach
Stephanie Ludi
Synopsis
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is interested in exploring the use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) by Veterans. These modalities represent therapies that are adjunct, or alternative, to standard treatments, but have been studied less and currently are not widely used. Veterans Affairs requires a system to help track and analyze these modalities in order to better understand Veterans’ use of them and to begin to characterize their perceived efficacy.
The Complementary and Alternative Medicine Registry will allow medical providers to enter information about CAM treatments that are being provided to Veterans. The system stores this information and allows program analysts and policy-makers to retrieve it in an intuitive and user friendly fashion. The system will be used to help guide the development of research and clinical guidelines relating to CAMs.
Website
Out By 5