If you stood among the crowd at this year’s ECE Design Fair, you’d spot a drone helicopter that can find any charging station, a power grid that can sense its own flaws, a surgeon’s scope that detects internal abnormalities and even an app that helps a child deal with cancer.
This month, U of T undergraduate students in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering shared more than 75 final-year projects in a four-day public showcase. Their ideas wowed packed audiences of professors, alumni, media and other guests.
Here’s a snapshot of three projects that were included in the event’s grand finale:
A program that spots polyps using machine learning
Nikhil Goyal, Dhaval Miyani and Jyoti Tripathi (all CompE 1T4) designed a program to help surgeons identify lesions and polyps during endoscopic surgery. (See their video – warning: graphic surgery content). Using machine-learning techniques, their image-processing platform identified anomalies in real time, making it much easier for surgeons exhausted during long operations to make sure they catch anything unusual.
“We worked on this project in collaboration with two researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital here in Toronto,” said Goyal. “It was exciting to work on something that has a real application, and get feedback on that.”
Drones that locate nearby charging stations
Lightweight drones could deliver your mail or drop medical supplies into disaster zones, if not for their limited battery life. Kevin Lee (ElecE 1T4), Zerzar Bukhari (ElecE 1T4), Sachin Siby (CompE 1T4) and Pranoy De (ElecE 1T4) tackled that challenge by creating SPARQ, an autonomous charging station for quadcopters. When batteries run low, quadcopters can home in on the nearest charging station, and automatically navigate the entry point and touch down to charge. (Watch SPARQ’s video).
Controlling your home from your smartphone
Want the lights in your creepy basement to turn on when you start down the stairs? Sumbul Alvi (CompE 1T4), Sumit Kumar (ElecE 1T4) and Edmund Phung (ElecE 1T4) designed a home automation system that lets you control your home—including lights, appliances, temperature and more—from your mobile phone. Reconfigurable sensors can operate independently, or be connected together so that, for example, your kettle turns on when you flip on the bedroom light.
“Lots of people have now heard about smart home control systems, such as Google’s Nest,” said Alvi. “We wanted to create something a little easier to use, that you can change around without having to rewire anything within your walls.”
“The quality of projects this year was extremely high,” said ECE Professor Khoman Phang, one of the course coordinators. “I’m always so impressed and inspired by the creativity and ingenuity of our students, and all they accomplish over the course of the year.”
At a reception following the final showcase event, alumnus Arshia Tabrizi (CompE 9T5) congratulated graduating students and encouraged them to stay engaged with the U of T Engineering alumni community.
“Don’t just think of your alumni group as your current classmates,” said Tabrizi. “Think about the ten years of graduates who came before you, and the ten years who will come after. That’s your network.”
Watch for some of the grand finale projects on Space Channel’s InnerSpace later in April 2014.
