The Deep Water Sensor System is a complete subsea package for remotely sensing water conditions over long distances. It consists of an interacting base station and tethered remote sensing unit capable of communicating data. The remote station uses temperature, pressure, and pH sensors to take measurements and characterize the quality of the water. The remote sensing unit is enclosed in a water-resistant case for deep-sea capability. The tether, which connects the base station and sensing unit, is a low-resistance twisted pair enabling a 4-20 milliamp current loop, which is ideal for the transmission of high-integrity electrical signals and an effective data-communication method in long-range applications. The base station interprets signals from the remote sensing unit using a highway addressable remote transducer compatible communication protocol. The base station compiles and illustrates the data using the LabVIEW graphical user interface. A Texas Instruments MSP-430 microcontroller unit is used in both the remote sensing unit and the base stations.

Toilets account for about 30 percent of home water usage, and the EPA estimates that household water leaks add up to more than a trillion gallons a year, over 10,000 gallons per household. The economic and environmental costs of these preventable household leaks are substantial. Current low-cost leak-detection systems are unreliable and require human intervention, so the project sponsor challenged the team to design a better way to prevent water loss due to leaks. The team designed a low-cost, autonomous water shutoff device that integrates with common household toilets and runs continuously off a 9-volt battery. A latching two-way solenoid valve is installed at the wall angle stop and connected to a control box and power source on the side of the toilet tank. An adjustable timer is set to account for variations in fill rate and water pressure that cause flush time to vary. The control system is connected to a waterproof momentary pull switch installed in series with the flapper chain. The switch is triggered upon flushing which causes the valve to open for the duration of the tank fill time, after which the valve closes again, protecting against slow intermittent leaks, constant leaks and flooding.

The purpose of this project was to construct a prototype platform that integrates focused microwave therapy and thermoacoustic imaging systems to deliver thermal therapy to a tissue while mapping its temperature in real time. Focused delivery of microwave thermal energy to a region of tissue can potentially be used as a noninvasive treatment for tumor reduction, but the heating needs to be constantly monitored to ensure that proper temperatures for tumor ablation are reached while the surrounding healthy tissue is not damaged. Current clinical methods for this monitoring are expensive and time consuming. This project will serve as a proof of concept for an integrated FMT-TI system to selectively heat and safely monitor different regions in tissue. The design includes a microwave generation, power amplification, and distribution network that delivers microwaves through specially designed patch antennas into a phantom tissue to heat a specified focal region. The tissue’s change in temperature is monitored by the FMT-TI system while it delivers secondary short-pulse microwaves through a waveguide into the tissue to induce an acoustic pressure wave, which is recorded by a scanning ultrasound transducer. This signal is processed and converted into a heat map displaying temperature intensity across a region of space.

The objective of this project is to design, develop, and test an autonomous surveillance system able to track objects without human intervention. The autonomous aerial tracking system developed by the team will be used in the International Aerial Robotics Competition in August 2016. Competition requirements stipulate that the unmanned aerial vehicle cannot use GPS, and that it must remain below 3 meters above the ground at all times. The competition arena is a 20-by-20-meter grid, which forces the detection device to have a large field of view. It must also be able to locate several small, mobile robots traversing the grid. The system uses four Pixy CMUcam5 cameras and an ELP 180 degree fisheye USB camera for detection. The system must provide the locations, velocities, and headings of the robots, in addition to its own location, velocity, and heading. All calculations are done onboard by a Raspberry Pi microcontroller and sent directly to the drone’s autopilot, which makes decisions on vehicle and robot movement based on information processed.

This project required the team to develop a system to monitor the concentration of an ionic buffer solution dispensed onto a standard 75x25 mm microscope slide. Because some tests done by Ventana are extremely sensitive to the ionic concentration of the on-slide fluid, the company wants a way to measure ionic concentration noninvasively. Evaporation and replenishment of the fluid containing the tissue sample cause variation in ionic concentration, which can adversely affect the quality of histopathology staining. The designed system uses a refractometer to measure in real time the refractive index of the buffer solution, which correlates with ionic concentration. When evaporation raises the ionic concentration, a technician can add a precise volume of buffer solution to compensate. By using an infrared laser to refract light into the solution and onto a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensor, the resulting angle of refraction can be used to assess the concentration as a function of temperature. A graphical user interface, which allows the user to measure concentration see it change over time, is implemented using a touch screen and Raspberry Pi microcontroller.

Ventana Medical Systems asked the team to design a small-scale in-line curing oven for use in histological glass slide storage preparation. The oven heats a glass/polymer protective layer that after curing creates an airtight bond between the shielding glass and the specimen slide. The specimen is tissue being tested for cancer cells. When heated in the curing oven, the polymer layer on the slide changes from a solvent state to a pure polymer state, in which the slide, tissue, and the coverslip become hardened together, facilitating handling, microscopy, and archiving. The design allows the slide, cover glass, and tissue specimen to enter the oven along with the solvent-state polymer, which heats up to the necessary curing temperature within one minute. The slide then exits the oven and the polymer cures upon cooling. The oven is designed to sponsor specifications and can be adjusted for a variety of fit and form factors, and cures slides continuously as they are fed into the system rather than curing several at the same time.

Ventana Medical Systems asked the team to design and fabricate a slide-retention apparatus able to pick up a standard microscope slide with 1.2 milliliters of liquid and transport it to a designated location while retaining 90 percent of the liquid and finishing the cycle within one minute. Additionally, the device must be easy to operate and be an appropriate size to place on a standard lab bench. The device is designed to operate after a laboratory technician places the slide within the system and presses a button. Once the command is received, the system moves to an initial position, verifies slide placement via a photoelectric sensor, lifts the slide using a vacuum subassembly, and transports it to the designated location. The system then releases the slide and verifies successful delivery. The designed system can move with four degrees of freedom: 24 inches horizontally, 15 inches vertically, 10 inches in depth, and 180 degrees around the vertical axis. System liquid retention was verified by repeated analysis of the system cycle as determined by difference in initial and final slide weight.

The objective of the project is to automate the measuring and cutting of medical tubing. The team designed a machine that accurately and precisely cuts tubing of various materials and diameters quicker than the current manual method. The machine accepts orders for tubes via barcode scanning or manually from a PC user interface. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide Ventana Medical Systems with a machine to automate its current manual tubing manipulation process that can be implemented on the manufacturing floor.

The rapid cycle amine system developed by NASA to remove excess humidity from space suits makes the air in the suits uncomfortably dry for astronauts, so the project sponsor asked the team to design a space suit humidity-control system. The team used Paragon’s Nafion bundle technology to control space suit humidity levels. Nafion is a copolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that is semipermeable to water. The design team designed a mathematical model of the system, including various orientations of the Nafion bundles, and determined the best bundle configuration. The team built and tested a prototype in the Paragon lab, which includes a test bed that simulates normal breathing, the Nafion bundle chamber, and a replica of the current rapid cycle amine system.

Raytheon, the project sponsor, wants to know if augmented reality could be used in its assembly operations, so it asked the design team to test and analyze the DAQRI augmented reality helmet, a wearable human-machine interface that allows users to interact intuitively with their surroundings. The team enabled the helmet to overlay the wearer’s view with animated work instructions on how to assemble a 3U CubeSat model. The team designed a CubeSat and created printed assembly instructions, which were then converted to augmented reality instructions viewable in the helmet. After validating the helmet’s capabilities, the overlaid instructions were tested by having two groups assemble the model, one using the helmet, the other working from printed instructions. For both groups, the team recorded average time taken to build the model and the average number of errors.