Capstone Senior Design Experience

1. Capstone Senior Design Experience Renee Rogge, Ph.D. April 2, 2004

2. Introduction • Capstone Design Experience • Traditional part of most engineering programs • Final preparation for students entering industry • Satisfies need for technical and ‘soft’ skills

3. Capstone Design Experience • Potential models • student selected projects • faculty assigned projects • individual projects • team projects • Current trends? • Team projects with industrial involvement

4. Proposed Capstone Experience • Team projects • Clients for projects • industry • rehabilitation centers (assistive technology) • hospitals • alumni, faculty, students • Management • Course director

5. Design Sequence • Junior year • Spring Quarter, 2 credits (Design I) • Senior Year • Fall Quarter, 4 credits (Design II) • Winter Quarter, 4 credits (Design III) • Spring Quarter, 2 credits (Design IV)

6. Learning Objectives for the Design Sequence Students will • select a project and form teams of 3-4 based on project selection. • clearly define the design problem. • develop design options satisfying client specifications. • formulate a test plan for the chosen design.

7. implement their design plans (build). • test the resulting system. • produce a written final report describing their project. • give a final oral presentation and project demonstration.

8. Design I • Lecture Series • Teaming • Product development process • Feasibility & Merit Criteria • How to achieve course deliverables • Documentation • Preview of potential projects

9. Design I (cont’d) • “Controlled” Design Experience • Preliminary Design Review (PDR) • Critical Design Review (CDR) • Documentation • Competition?!?

10. Design I (cont’d) • By the end of Design I, students will • form Senior Design Teams, • select projects (and gain approval), • identify technical advisors, • submit preliminary paperwork, and • attend several Critical Design Reviews of students finishing the Capstone experience (Design IV).

11. Design II • Team meetings with management • Culminates in a Preliminary Design Review • team submits report & presents design decisions • team requests permission from technical advisors and client to order parts and move to the build and test portion of the experience.

12. Design II • Lecture series, as needed • technical presentations • budgeting • ethics, i.e. IRB, IACUC, etc. • patents, intellectual property • Gantt charts • literature reviews • ...

13. Design III • Continued lecture series, as needed • Biweekly meetings with management • Student activities • implement approved design • test design • document modifications and test results

14. Design III (cont’d) • At the end of Design III, the teams will • provide evidence to management that the build phase has been completed. • document design modifications. • initiate test plans.

15. Design IV • Students will • complete the testing phase of the project. • submit a final report. • conduct a Critical Design Review complete with demonstration. • Public presentation of the projects • mini symposium? • poster display?

16. Organizational Issues • Faculty • One faculty member serving as management for Design I --> Design IV • Develop/revise management documentation for future offerings • Various members serving as technical advisors, i.e. subject matter experts • Clients, as desired • Attendance at PDRs and CDRs

17. Organizational Issues (cont’d) • Projects • Carefully defined • Interdisciplinary • Good support from industry will be helpful

18. Benefits • Students • applications, seeing it all “come together” • exposure to industry environment • teaming • job interviews

19. Benefits • Faculty • exposure to new problems and ideas • maintain or create contacts with industry • opportunities for collaboration • ABET and assessment

20. Role in ABET EC2000 • More than half of the Criterion 3 (a-k) outcomes involve abilities directly related to design • Criterion 4 requires design experience • Senior Design provides one vehicle for assessment of program outcomes • surveys (faculty, tech advisors, students) • grading rubrics

21. Summary • Capstone experience is a great opportunity for faculty and students • Large cost (time, $$) • Greater reward • Closed loop assessment required every year to help the experience mature

22. Questions?

23. Current Research Activities

24. A Digital Human Model for Space Suit Design and Analysis Summer 2002 & 2003 Johnson Space Center Anthropometry & Biomechanics Facility (ABF)

25. Introduction • Current suit design and evaluation • Based on traditional anthropometric measurements • Neglects potentially important surface and volume data (useful in design) • Lacks range of motion data for suited astronauts • Human modeling

26. Research Objective • Develop a new methodology for representing humans in a computer environment to help address the issues of suit accommodation, new suit design criteria, and suit performance.

27. Shape Tape • Motion analysis system • Wireless • Tracks and records whole body motion • Evaluating accuracy • Can be used as input to ABF’s ERGO model

30. 3D Whole Body Scanning • Traditional measurements • Provides surface data, with surface reconstruction mechanisms • Exports in many file formats • Segmentation capable

31. Scanner Data

32. Research Strategy • Incorporate 3D surface information into the ERGO model, including ‘clothing’ options • Implement kinematic capabilities • Couple kinematic capabilities with ROM data from Shapetape. Must maintain the integrity of the data

33. Summer 2003 • Segmentation • Reconnect segments • Add kinematic capabilities to the arms without sacrificing accuracy

34. Segmentation • Used automated landmarks • 5 Tecmath cuts • 15 Matlab segments • Modular approach

37. Repositioning • Whole body model based on one static scan • Need the ability to pose the body in any feasible position • Computationally expensive to calculate end position for each data point • Use thin-plate spline theory

38. Thin-Plate Spline Theory • Frequently used to analyze biological organisms • Method for interpolating surfaces over irregularly spaced data • Expresses the dependence of the physical bending energy of a thin metal plate on point constraints

39. Thin-Plate Spline Theory • Specifies the mapping of points for a reference image to corresponding points on a target image • Based on minimum physical bending energy • Use ERGO model calculations at target points

40. Preliminary Results

41. Scanned Posture

42. Right shoulder extended • Left shoulder flexed

43. Left & right elbow flexed

44. Right shoulder abducted • Left shoulder flexed

45. Validation • Scanned subject in various poses • Compare data points • ~10% error for right arm • Predict 20-25% error for whole body

46. Limitations • Error increases at more extreme postures • No soft tissue characteristics • Joints are not modeled

47. Future Plans • Expand TPS theory • Validate all segments • Add clothing options to the model • Couple with dynamic range of motion data

48. Other Research Activities

49. Keck Engineering Analysis Center Funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation -- $340,000 January 2003-January 2006 FIE Paper on Assessment of Center – October 2004

50. Stability and Balance in the Elderly