EECS 373 Fall 2015 Research Projects
Prabal Dutta

Background: There are lots of interesting embedded systems out there
that researchers and educators could use but either don't have the
skills or time to actually design and build.  However, some of you may
have the time and skills, especially during or after 373, to create
such things.  We'd like to encourage that by identifying some project
opportunities.  Most of these may not seem as cool as building a small
Segwey or a quadcopter.  On the other hand, they are quite useful for
addressing a range of research or other problems.  Picking one of
these projects will ensure that you will get a lot of attention from
the 373 instructional staff as well as a nearly limitless budget (at
least by 373 standards) to carry out your ideas.  These projects can
lead to publications in top tier research conferences, so if you're
interested in graduate school, this would be an excellent way to get
some experience and visibility.

This term, we have the following projects available:

1. Internet of Shoes: The objective of this project is to develop
different interactive shoelace prototypes that can easily be threaded
in a shoe or tied around feet or arms. Each shoelace consists of a
transceiver and a custom-designed microcontroller unit with two RGB
LED’s that are coupled with a flexible plastic fiber that serves as a
light guide and shoelace. All components are powered with a miniature
battery and sit in a small weatherproof and easy to attach plastic
enclosure. The color and frequency of each transmitted light wave can
be programmed, for example, to be delayed related to the signal
strength or reversely related to it. Pressing a button on the shoelace
triggers a light wave that takes hold of the participating crowd. The
system can be set to choose only a few participants at once
(e.g. indicated by a blinking light) to trigger a light wave. Further,
when, for example, a green and a red light wave interfere, the
resulting light wave can be programmed to turn yellow. These are just
some of the programming ideas that we want to use to explore at the
interaction and dynamic of larger crowds participating in this
experimental light installation.

See the following for images:
  http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/teaching/eecs373/projects/IoT-shoes-1.png
  http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~prabal/teaching/eecs373/projects/IoT-shoes-2.png


2. Doorjamb: An recent research paper proposed "Doorjamb," a system
   for unobtrusive room-level tracking of people in homes using
   doorway sensors.  From the paper's abstract: "Indoor tracking
   systems will be an essential part of the home of the future,
   enabling location-aware and individually-tailored
   services. However, today there are no tracking solutions that are
   practical for 'every day' use in the home. In this paper, we
   introduce the Doorjamb tracking system that uses ultrasonic range
   finders mounted above each doorway, pointed downward to sense
   people as they walk through the doorway. The system differentiates
   people by measuring their heights, infers their walking direction
   using signal processing, and identifies their room locations based
   on the sequence of doorways through which they pass. Doorjamb
   provides room-level tracking without requiring any user
   participation, wearable devices, privacy intrusive sensors, or
   high-cost sensors."  The goal of this project is to design a
   version of doorjamb using the UM ATUM or NUCLEUM system, generate
   the hardware and software needed to be able to build several of
   these systems, and evaluate the quality of the sensor itself.

   Doorjamb paper: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~whitehouse/research/buildingEnergy/hnat12doorjamb.pdf
   ATUM module:
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum.pdf
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum.jpg
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum/a/atum_a_2014-04-28.zip
   ATUM breakout board: 
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout.pdf
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout.jpg
     http://lab11.eecs.umich.edu/content/pcb/atum-breakout/a/atum-breakout_a_2014-06-04.zip



3. Ambient Smoke Detector: This projects leverages a new sensor that
   can detect the chemicals released into the air in the presence of
   cigarette or marijuana smoke.  The project goal is to integrate
   these sensors with a microcontroller and Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE)
   radio that would allow take readings periodically, store them
   locally on flash memory, and transmit them over a WiFi radio, all
   using the Intel Edison platform.