The Capstone Design Symposium, a senior engineering student showcase, began March 17 with projects from mechatronics students. As a graduation requirement, teams of upper-year engineering students implement what they have learned in their classrooms to conceptualize and design a project. Here are some of the projects showcased in the Symposium:
InMōshn is an affordable filter kit that can turn any kind of board into a motorized version that is controllable via phone.
“There’s a lot of commutes we’ve been on where we get stuck,” team member Prateek Madhikar said. “So we wanted to develop a kit that can convert any board to an electrical on-board at an affordable cost, but still give you the same performance.”
Centaur is a robot capable of driving into nuclear power plant boiler rooms — where temperatures and radiation levels are high — to perform non-destructive pipe testing for preventative maintenance.
“The ultimate goal is to make [nuclear power plants] safer for workers, and also safer for the general public,” team lead Eric Shi said.
Five Tau is a smart controller for water purifiers. Companies can use the device to collect data for trend analysis. They can then use that analysis to so that technicians would know when visit these machines.
“There is a lot of inefficiencies with technicians checking up on a lot of water purifiers and that is a waste of time,” team member Francesco Macchione said.
HappenVR is an enhanced virtual reality for upper-limb rehabilitation, designed for patients who don’t have the resources or motivation to go into a physical clinic. It also helps patients keep their interest in completing their therapy.
“Currently, there are more than 400,000 stroke patients in Canada and three out of four of them do not recover completely,” said team member Si Te Feng. “So there exists a need for us to go into this field and try to reduce the current cost, as well as try and do things differently.”
The Capstone Design Symposium will continue until March 28 with other engineering departments.
