Table of Contents
- Computer Science
- Civil Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
- Industrial Technology & Graphic Communication
- Interdisciplinary
Click the link to view the 2018-2019 project summaries.
Computer Science
ACUA - Animal Care front-desk ticketing system V2.0
Sponsored by LA County, Animal Care and Control
Students: Ryan Dunning, Jacky Gnong, Hung Luu, Matthew Segovia, Joshua Tran
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Huiping Guo
The Animal Care & Control Department in LA county is in great need to improve their existing infrastructure to facilitate serving customers. Customers have to wait in long lines to get service, especially during peak time. Based on the platform developed by previous CS senior design team developed, the current team will continue to work on the project. More functionalities will be incorporated into the system and to make the system more flexible and more reliable. Some of the limitations of existing solutions such as the DMV ticketing system, only serve to assign a ticket number to a window number. Assigning tickets to window numbers helps expedite the long lines but, we believe our team can deliver an even quicker ticketing system and design a stress-free experience.
Our team is developing a ticketing system that takes the customer’s needs and experience into consideration. The main goal is to design and develop a way to create detailed tickets with only a few simple selections from a tablet that will serve as a kiosk. Our solution involves developing a mobile app for creating tickets to serve customers and a web app for the care center clerks to serve the created tickets. One main benefit in having our mobile app serve as a kiosk is the ability to help more customers when all the clerks are busy. The mobile app will display frequently asked questions and other general information. This will help with the number of customers unnecessarily waiting in line only to ask a simple question. For example, the mobile app will display their most popular question, “Can I visit the kennels?” and the app will make it very clear that one is free to visit the kennels and does not need permission. Our tickets contain important information that will be useful for the clerk when assisting a customer. This should help expedite the line wait time and help deliver context more clearly to the clerks.
The focus on this project was to accommodate to as many users as possible. We designed and created our app to be easy to use. The key was to keep it simple while taking into consideration the customer’s experience interacting with our platform. The project is still being tested but our team is seeing constantly trying to improve the platform. In the meantime, our project test results have been mostly positive and are moving closer to having our platform in production.
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Artificial Intelligence for Smart Cities
Sponsored by LA City, TOYOTA
Liaison: Hunter Owens
Students: Marcio Arakaki Ogata, Alejandro Bernal, Haley Gray, Freddy Gutierrez, Matthew Ramos
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mohammad Pourhomayoun
The City of Los Angeles is very known for its diverse cultures and timeless night-life. However, it is also infamous for the dreaded traffic, especially during rush-hours. Hence, the City of LA and LADOT have collaborated with CSULA to apprehend this grand problem. As part of a stepping stone that Los Angeles City have taken in preparation of the Olympics 2028 whereby we presume traffic will may worse. Apart from preparing for the Olympics, this project is one of the many that will assist the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) in achieving Vision Zero, which purposes to end all traffic injuries and deaths by 2025. Thus, the objectives of this project consist of developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithms and advanced machine learning models that can monitor, manage, or predict the traffic flow of a time-series data, analyzing and visualizing the resulting prediction, and designing a data preprocessing pipeline whereby city engineers can use.
The current developed applications include:
1) Bicycle routing and navigation utilizing real-time data from the Metro Bike Share with emphasis on route safety.
2) Data Visualization of Historical Metro Bike Share Data.
3) Data Visualization of bicycle and pedestrian accidents in relation designated bicycle routes in Los Angeles.
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Baja SAE Drivetrain Optimization
Sponsored by Cal State LA Baja SAE
Students: Krystal Bernal, Roi Chico, Edit Vosganians, Bowen Waugh, Huang Xu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
Cal State LA Baja SAE is a student-run team that participates yearly in the Baja SAE engineering competition against 100 universities, both national and international. The students design and fabricate an off-road vehicle, then go through static judging and dynamic racing portions of the four day long competition. The static events include a design presentation that is judged by professional engineers and requires the team to validate their design of the vehicle with testing procedures and data acquisition systems. In order to optimize the performance of the vehicle and present validation of the students' engineering design, computer science students have been tasked with mounting electronic sensors to the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). Data will be collected from the sensors and analyzed with different CVT configurations to determine the best configuration for each dynamic event. These include acceleration, hill climb, maneuverability, rock crawl/suspension and traction, and a 4 hour long endurance race. Many Baja SAE teams create a custom CVT design or eCVT - a CVT that electronically automates the process that the traditionally mechanical system performs. The data and analyses collected will also be used to build a better understanding of the CVT components so that our team may create a custom system in the future. The senior design students are required to choose sensors that are ideal for measuring the various behaviors of the CVT as required by the Baja team, choose a controller that will read and record sensor data, and create an algorithm for analyzing the data to provide feedback about vehicle performance.
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Chatbot
Sponsored by Cal State LA - ITS
Liaison:Michael Lee
Students: Julio Aguilar, Enrique Castillo-Rosales, Jose Lopez, Yi Ruan, Kuong Thong
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Zilong Ye
Pineapple chatbot is a chatbot dedicated to providing general information which can be found throughout the www.calstatela.com domain.
When our chatbot receives a question from a user, we use a machine learning library named spaCy which is capable of interpreting the question and extracting the intent of the question and the entity of the question. Using the intent and entity, we search our database using an advanced query to find the best results. Each row of data is then scored using Levenstein distance, a string comparison algorithm, for similarity. The highest scoring row is then passed through spaCy once again to process the question and return an answer. The answer comes in the form of the actual answer or a link to the information requested.
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Commodity Standard Crosswalk for LA County ISD
Sponsored by LA County ISD
Liaisons:Trinh Mac, Jon Neill
Students: Jordi Alejandre, Adryel Arizaga, Norin Chea, Daniel Geiser Magallanes, Jesse Rodriguez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
Creating an automated, AI powered “Cross-Walk” between different commodity standards for Los Angeles County. The program/application will be able to translate a given code, description, class, etc. from the standard used by Los Angeles County to the UNSPEC standard. This program should able to return any and all matches from a code/description in a standard to another and give a confidence level of the accuracy of the matches.
There is currently no automated process available for finding potential matches between different standards, only manual algorithms. Los Angeles county has attempted to out-source this project to teams in the past but to no avail. A program with greater than or equal to 80% accuracy in predicting between two standards opens the door translating across multiple standards. The ability to automatically translate between different standards also greatly reduces the time necessary for the equivalent manual process.
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Context Detection in Augmented Vision Systems
Sponsored by Vodafone
Liaison: Haley Kirk
Students: Leonardo Gallegos, Nerses Martirosyan, Cristofer Ramos, Raymundo Romero, Michael Valdez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Navid Amini, Kevin Delao
Hemianopia (impaired vision in half the visual field) is a major cause of disability, affecting millions of stroke patients each year. We plan to design an end-to-end vision enhancement and tele-rehabilitation system combining a smartphone and a compact head-mounted display to maximize the residual vision and enable independent living in hemianopic patients.
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CubeSat Deorbiting Vehicle
Sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation
Liaisons: Rick Johnson, Denny Ly, Karina Martinez, Pablo Settecase
Students: Mark Dagraca Jr, Kit Ha, Jonathan Tahod, Pierre Tobgui, Jonathan Ung
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
The team will develop the software for the SimPlat, Cub, and GS, creating the command and control system, telemetry processing, space dynamics simulation, image recognition, and machine learning system. The software development team will use appropriate collaboration tools. Develop the following software:
- Develop GS with intuitive user interface
- For SimPlat, read real-time signals from Cub, interpret intended motion, and move vehicle to simulate motion in space, communicate status with GS, receive instructions from GS
- For Cub, interpret proximity sensor data to approach/avoid objects, process camera image data and understand what it’s looking at, send/receive thruster status, control payload mechanism, communicate status and receive commands from GS.
- For GS, two-way communication with Cub and SimPlat, ability to compare action/response data of Cub and SimPlat.
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Extension for Public Defender's Client Case Management System
Sponsored by LA County Public Defender
Liaisons: Mohammed Al Rawi, Gratia Dsouza
Students: Miguel Castillo, Samuel Moon, Aschelle Thomas, Danny Tran, Conan Yee
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Chengyu Sun
The LA County Public Defender Office uses box.com as cloud storage for video files in the Client Case Management System. Case videos such as surveillance videos tend to be long with large portions containing unrelated content, which makes reviewing them tedious and time-consuming. Box.com provides a framework, known as Box Skills, which allows applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools on the content stored on box.com. The first phase of the project is to leverage Box Skills to transcribe the case videos, and analyze the case videos to build an "index" of scenes and activities. This will greatly improve the efficiency of reviewing these videos by attorneys and law enforcement officers. If the first phase of the project is successful, we plan to focus our effort in the second phase on migrating legacy systems to the modern IT infrastructure at the Public Defender Office.
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ArQive
Sponsored by Cal State LA - ArQive & The Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology (INART) at Cal State LA
Liaison:Cynthia Wang
Students: Fadi Haddad, Klaudia Hernandez, Nathaniel Suarez, Tony Truong, Justine West
Faculty Advisor: John Hurley
ArQive, formerly known as GlobaltraQs, is a LGBTQ+ app and website that allows anyone to post fun and interesting events that you took part on the map. Founded in 2014 by Dr. Cynthia Wang and Zachary Vernon, this website allows more LGBTQ+ to identify safe spaces they would not have known before. By allowing users to place pins indicating where they have been to, we can see the location the user has been to before. Each pin contains a title and description detailing the events that happen to the user.
Originally built in PHP, the previous website was usable, but contained a lot of bugs. We decided to move over to Django and React to make a more dynamic website. We used NodeJS to handle requests faster while using BootStrap and Material-UI to make the website more visually appealing for the user. We are changing the previous website by making the newest one more scalable, responsive, and secure. By giving a select group of students to stress test our new website, we can fine tune our website’s user learnability by receiving feedback from regular users. While we are far from finished, there will be more improvements coming to the website.
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Jovian
Sponsored by Emergent
Students: Prerakbhai Bhakta, Leonardo Ramirez, Mayank Saboo, Douglas Weisse, Bingnan Zhou
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Zilong Ye
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Lunar Lighting Simulation and Moon Phases
Sponsored by NASA JPL
Liaisons: Emily Law, Shan Malhotra
Students: Gabriela Alvarado, Justin Chow, Anthony Collado, Alden Lalas, Zachary Portillo
Faculty Advisor: Richard Cross
JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech. From the long history of leaders drawn from the university's faculty to joint programs and appointments, JPL's intellectual environment and identity are profoundly shaped by its role as part of Caltech.JPL is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech. From the long history of leaders drawn from the university's faculty to joint programs and appointments, JPL's intellectual environment and identity are profoundly shaped by its role as part of Caltech. Today JPL continues its world-leading innovation, implementing programs in planetary exploration, Earth science, space-based astronomy and technology development, while applying its capabilities to technical and scientific problems of national significance. JPL technology developed to enable new missions is also applied on Earth to benefit our everyday lives.
The objective of this project is to create an extension of NASA Solar System Treks’ Moon Trek to display correct lighting conditions across the Moon, and show phases of the Moon. With user input, it shall identify when are the partial and full lunar eclipse, and associated earth locations. Upon completion, users will be able to select specific date and time and will be able to view the shading effects of the Moon during time frame. The shading can be shown layered on top of different global lunar maps. Given specific date/time, users shall be able to export numeric values of the sunlight intensity of entire Moon.
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Mission Planning System
Sponsored by Boeing
Liaison: Sen Yao
Students: Richard Balbuena, Nathan Lee, Jesus Mendoza, Maximilian Orozco
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
Operations Data Analysis and Management System (ODAS) is an elaborate software suite that provides tons of functionality for handling large quantities of Telemetry, right out of the box!
As more and more satellites are launched into orbit, it is important to track of the status of each one. We're developing ODAS, with guidance from our Boeing liaisons, to function as a central hub which focuses on monitoring the Health and Status of your satellites. ODAS does so by analyzing the Health and Status Telemetry for each of your satellites, and providing powerful analytical tools, via a user-friendly Web interface, that allows any user or organization to monitor the state of their satellites. From the beginning we designed ODAS to be an Easy-to-Use system that deals with all of the dirty work for you, ranging from Fault Detection using Machine Learning to scalable storage solutions to manage millions of Telemetry data points.
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Parks and Recreation Mobile App Enhancement
Sponsored by LA County, Parks and Recreation
Liaisons:Quetzal Arellano, Andrew Charlton, Ashwini Padukone, Malou Rubio, Feza Sanigok, Alan Zabaro
Students: Anshilkumar Patel, Veronica Toriz, Ziwei Xiong, Weifeng Yang, Zijin Zhu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
Incorporate a Parks Treasure-Hunt game into last year's mobile app. The concept is similar to the mobile game POKEMON GO!, where players travel physically to various locations to find pokemons. The Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation holds historical, cultural, and other interesting treasures as well as thousands of animal and plant species. However, these treasures remain undiscovered by many park users. The Parks Treasure-Hunt mobile game aims to increase awareness about the parks and its treasures and to bring more children and families to LA County parks. It requires players, accompanied by a virtual pet, to visit various parks to hunt for hidden objects--which will be described by Parks staff and identified on the app. In addition, the mobile game encourages the players to exercise as they travel from one interest point to another, which will generate health points for their virtual pet. The game includes quizzes for the players to learn about the natural habitat and animals in the parks.
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Plan Analysis Application
Sponsored by LA County, Regional Planning
Liaison: Tony Alcaraz
Students: Nikita Aggarwal, Abraham Estrada, Guadalupe Sahagun, David San, Daniel Victoria Jr
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Yuqing Zhu
The Department of Regional Planning would like enhance their level of service to their customers by facilitating a more intuitive experience of navigating through the Case Reports. Each case is customized to have any number of permits determined by the applicable zoning codes and regulations. Permits are categorized into business, commercial, and residential, and include but are not limited to accessory dwelling unit, alcoholic beverage sales, hotel standards, and parking protocols. The Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning needs a streamlined web application that directs users to the appropriate permit forms with their case’s information and helps users monitor the status of their case. It is of high priority to adapt a more modern, manageable, and automated permit processing service in order to be more time and cost efficient.
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Project Athena: Log & Infrastructure Monitoring
Sponsored by Commonwealth Casualty Company
Liaison: Mahan Hajianpour
Students: Misael Corvera Alfaro, Jateni Dida, Alexander Horejsi, Yi Wang, Zac You
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Chengyu Sun
Commonwealth Casualty Company (CCC) is an insurance company based in Arizona and was founded in 2010 with a mission to provide affordable insurance for homeowners, renters, auto insurance seekers and much more. The company is driven to improve it’s services and products constantly to be able to provide customized and innovative solutions to serve the unique needs of every client. In order to provide the best tailored services, the company consumes and works with a huge amount of data and project Athena is intended to assist the administration, the technical staff and the general employee with a user-friendly and custom dashboard that would display the real-time status of the servers and virtual private clouds (VPCs) the company is using to run the business.
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QTC Medical Record Indexing Workflow
Sponsored by QTC
Liaisons: Francisco Guzman, Nader Nemati
Students: Alex Dang, Kevin Flores, Julie Kasparian, Alex Navarrete, Dinh Thai
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jiang Guo, Francisco Guzman
The purpose of the module is to provide workflow management for the Medical Records Handling. The vision is that medical records reviewer logs into application, and based on programmed priority, it presents the next set of records for indexing. The goal of the project will be to provide the students with knowledge on queue / workflow, security, integration and programming aspects of an enterprise IT project.
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Race Against The Machine
Sponsored by The Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology (INART) at Cal State LA
Liaison: Sylke Meyer
Students: Brandon Arevalo, Timmy Chau, Andy Echeverria, Chan Kou, Spencer Young
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Elaine Kang
The design of an AI-based NPC (non-playing character) for an interdisciplinary theatre project entitled "The Walk Out".
The Walk Out (WT) is an improvisational theater production directed by Prof. Sylke Rene Meyer (Television, Film, and Media Studies). It takes the reality-based, biographical spaces of the Lincoln Heights High School, and the Church of the Epiphany in Lincoln Heights as a starting point to investigate and reveal power structures inherent in space, social structure, its actors, and objects. This project will adapt and situate the East L.A., 1968: 'Walkout!' in the context of current academic institutions. The project will improvise all story segments based on the real events and translate this specific spatial and linguistic framework, that employs projection technology, into improve theater, and game play. The computer sciences team would contribute to the theater play by to adding a digital component to the production concerning artificial intelligence as a co-creating actor. This AI actor is capable of interacting with human actors, and that makes independent decisions and learns while in use.
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Remote Home Assist Using Voice Assistant and Machine Learning
Sponsored by LA County, WDACS
Liaisons: Mike Agostinelli, Edwin Cheng
Students: Hismark Carrera Cabrera, Ingelbert Figueroa, Fernando Mejia, Margarita Nuridjanian, Daniel Preciado
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mohammad Pourhomayoun
The mission of Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services(WDACS) is to connect communities and improve the lives of all generations in Los Angeles County. WDACS connects individuals to careers and employers to a skilled workforce. WDACS ensures the well-being of older and dependent adults in the community. As well as resolve conflict and improve human relations in our diverse County.
Remote Home Assist will bring in-home, interactive technology to older adults, helping them maintain independence and well-being. The specific functional objectives involve developing skills for the Amazon Alexa and Actions for the Google Home Assistant to enable end users to interactive with services programs and supply wellness responses. The older adults will answer a set of questions on a scheduled basis to help caregivers make remote assessments. For the second part of the project we will be focused on the data science aspect of the project by providing data analysis of the at risk factors of the older adults based on their responses.
The system will also verbalize and display schedule reminders for congregate meals, doctor appointments, senior center classes and other events. It will enable the users to call for transportation, schedule activities and obtain wellness coaching. WDACS will provide scope guidance, computing infrastructure, technical support and devices. The students will provide design analysis and software development.
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RoboSub
Sponsored by Cal State LA - Competition
Liaisons: Mark Tufenkjian
Students: Viraj Bhakta, Ethan Cha, Carlos Gomez, Daniel Gomez, Andres Lopez-Ruiz, Levi Onyiah
Faculty Advisor: Mark Sargent
The RobSub Senior Design project is a joint project between a team of Electrical/Mechanical engineering students and a team of computer science students. The purpose of the project is to build a fully autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that will compete in an international competition in summer of 2020. The competition is comprised of a sequence of different tasks and obstacles that test the AUV's ability to detect objects, maneuver itself, and to make decisions. The computer science team will design and implement the software that pilots the AUV, providing navigation, stabilization, object-detection, and task-handling capabilities.
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SERF - Parks Special Event Registration and FAQ
Sponsored by LA County, Parks and Recreation
Liaisons: Quetzal Arellano, Andrew Charlton, Feza Sanigok, Alan Zabaro
Students: Jose Garcia, Huy Nguyen, Tony Orellana, Ryan Peralta, Jonathan Wang
Faculty Advisor: Keenan Knaur
The purpose of this project is to make the experience of booking a special event at a Los Angeles County park as intuitive and user friendly as possible. We want to be able to help users easily find all of the information pertaining to special events. Our main goal is to create an online interface that will easily facilitate the booking of parks for special events while simultaneously keep track of relevant information, such as the most common type of special event being held, so that the Parks and Recreation department can better tailor the registration experience to their most frequent customers. By the end of this project we want people to be able to easily register/apply for a special event, which in turn will allow more people to hold events and create greater revenue for the Parks and Recreation department, and L.A. County.
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Sidewalk Slope Monitoring System for Bureau of Engineering (IoT Edge Device)
Sponsored by LA City Bureau of Engineering
Liaisons:Ted Allen, Alisa Blake, Miguel Grajeda, Raul Virgen
Students: Judith Cabrera, Adriany Cocom, Mark Dagraca Jr, Audrey Stanford, Adriana Velasco, Xue Wu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott, Jungsoo (Soo) Lim
The City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering maintains over 7,500 miles of sidewalks. When a segment of sidewalk does not settle evenly or has been raised up by tree-root growth, the sidewalk becomes uneven. This can create pedestrian hazards. In addition, the City is obligated to ensure that its sidewalks conform to Federal ADA standards, which limit the extent to which a sidewalk may slope.
This is the third* term of the multi-year project. The overall goal is the development a vehicle with capabilities that include, measuring sidewalk slope, taking pictures of locations where the sidewalk violates the ADA standards, to enable City personal to anticipate possible problems.
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Smart Eye Drops
Sponsored by Vodafone
Liaison: Haley Kirk
Students: Marco Aguilar, Aaron Alvarez, Ana Cortes, Jonathan Nunez, Feng You, Ivan Yu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Navid Amini, Kevin Delao
We aim at developing an eye drop adherence monitor that will fit any bottle, accurately record when patients take medication, and have the ability to transfer data to physicians via a wireless network. Upon completion, our eye drop adherence monitor will help patients abide by their treatment plan with timely reminders, and it will allow physicians to see how well their patients are adhering to medication regimens and accurately determine if prescribed medications are acting effectively. This project has the potential to help reduce blindness caused by diseases such as glaucoma.
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Telescope MoonTrek
Sponsored by NASA JPL
Liaison: Emily Law
Students: Armen Minassian, Hector Sanchez, Ruolan Shen, Sebastian Sunjoto, Yiliang Wu
Faculty Advisor: Weronika Cwir
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research facility and development center managed for NASA by Caltech that carries out robotic space and Earth science missions. JPL has conducted robotic missions to study all the planets in the solar system as well as asteroids, comets and the Earth's moon. Today JPL continues its world-leading innovation, implementing programs in planetary exploration, Earth science, space-based astronomy, and technology development.
Through the missions involving collecting data from Earth's moon JPL has created MoonTrek, a mapping and modeling portal. The site contains high-resolution data sets covering most of the Moon. These include imagery and digital elevation models - but also hundreds of layers of spectrometry, radiometry, gravity fields, radar, slope, roughness, mineralogy. Additionally, there are tools that allow for analysis and rendering of derived datasets.
JPL is partnering with California State University - Los Angeles, College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology to build an interface between MoonTrek and telescopes amateur astronomers use to look at the Moon. When images from the telescope are routed to a laptop or a smartphone they will be annotated with names of lunar features and landmarks, local temperature, chemical makeup of the soil -- or any available information the astronomer chooses.
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United Way Mobile App
Sponsored by United Way
Liaisons: Henry Gascon, Peter Manzo, Maryrose McMahon
Students: Juya Ahmadi, Jonathan Anthony, Alan Garcia, Jacob Julag-ay, Nicolas Ojeda, Arnav Singhania
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jiang Guo, Sharaf Nazaar
When a report is produced on the challenges families contend with to meet the costs of a decent standard of living, called the Real Cost Measure (www.unitedwaysca.org/realcost), and we also partner with Benefit Kitchen to allow families to screen themselves to see what benefits they may be eligible for (e.g., CalFresh food assistance). It would be great if a team could help us develop a new mobile app that gathers information from users about their household income, number, and ages of family members, and then compares that to the Real Cost Measure household budgets, and do that for California and other states (starting with New York).
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Video Quality Rating And Analysis Tool
Sponsored by AT&T (Direct TV)
Liaisons: Peshala Pahalwatta, Harrison Hays, Ross Castillo
Students: George Beltran, Ponaroth Eab, Nelson Huynh, Daniel Ramirez, Deanna Thomas
Faculty Advisor: Mark Sargent
The project will involve further improving an application that AT&T has developed for subjective testing of video quality. The application gathers subjective test data from collections of video clips. The core components of the current application include a database to store the video clip information, an interactive user interface (currently iOS app) that plays back the video sequences and collects subjective test scores, and an admin app that facilitates interaction with the database. As one aspect of the project, the students will focus on “gamifying” the current user interface by making it more interactive and fun to use for the subjective test participants. This will ensure that the test participants will stay engaged with the application and more test data can be obtained per participant. As a second aspect of the project, the students will add a second rating method to the existing tool that is based on the absolute category rating scale. As a third aspect of the project, the students will create an admin dashboard that will display the test data in a user-friendly manner that will facilitate AT&T’s ability to analyze the test results. A stretch goal for the project will be to include support for Android devices, tvOS, and Android TV devices.
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Weed Hazard Application
Sponsored by LA County ACWM
Liaison: Leopoldo Herrera
Students: Brian Canela, Andy Lam, Hummam Sagga, Zachary Tapia, Austin Vargason
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Yuqing Zhu
Once upon a time, the Weed Hazard Ownership List (WHOL) application was hosted completely on a mainframe. Some parts of the application, data entry, were moved to Access 2000. The data in Access 2000 is imported and exported to and from the mainframe using fixed width files. Some of these routines are manual. The reporting for this application is done on the mainframe. Data from the application is sent to the mainframe quarterly and at the end of the fiscal year, a 5th time. Reports are generated from the mainframe quarterly and at the end of the fiscal year.
The WHOL application tracks a list of parcels that are “declared” a possible fire hazard due to vegetation growth. ACWM mainly handles empty parcels. The LA County Fire Department handles clearing of parcels with dwelling or buildings. The process starts with a parcel being “declared” a fire hazard. It is added to the application. A notice is sent out and the parcel owner has a set amount of time to clear the property. Field inspectors follow up on the status of the parcel to see if its been cleared. If it has, the parcel is “removed’ from the list. If it hasn’t been cleared by the given deadline, the county will clear the property and pass the costs of the clearing onto the parcel owner as a Direct Charge to their property tax. At then end of the fiscal year data is submitted to the Auditor Controllers office to recoup costs of clearing parcels done by ACWM due to the parcel owner either requesting the work or forcing the work due to non-compliance.
Project: Replace the Access 2000 and mainframe applications. All data entry will be done on a new web application. Auditing will be done on the web application. Reporting will likely be done using Power BI Desktop and Power BI Report Builder. We are embracing Power BI because to get similar reports using web applications requires a greater effort and increased maintenance. Power BI reports can be created as a base file, copied to each user, and they could modify the file if they wish with some additional training. The payoff is that customers would now have full access to their data in a read-only environment where they can safely manipulate, query, and report data. Dashboards, graphs, charts, etc., are now as easy as Excel. A very empowering tool.
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Civil Engineering
Sustainable Solutions to Decentralized Water Treatment and Recharge
Sponsored by The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Liaison: Benita L. Horn, Principal Public Affairs Representative
Students: Cesar Jeovany Orellana, Michael Scott Duchetta, Ramon Herman, Joe Angel Rosalez, Diego Alejandro Carrizo, Edgar Ernesto Chavez, Anthony Steven Hernandez, Felicia Yin, Aaron Justin Corey, Alexis Joshua Diaz Gonzalez I, Justin Ramsey, Jose I Velasquez, Justin Jimenez, Daniel Marquez, Alan Lopez, Moustafa Ezzeddine, Emmanuel Diaz, Berenice Santiago, Adriana Lopez, Ryan Yip.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Sonya Lopez
An important component of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Green New Deal goal for Los Angeles is to recycle 100% of our wastewater by the year 2035. This goal will sustain water resources for Los Angeles residents for years to come and reduce the need for imported water. Approximately 50% of the freshwater used by Los Angeles residents comes from local groundwater aquifers. After use, the water is sent downstream to a central facility for treatment. Once it is treated, it then travels downstream to the ocean for disposal. The goal of our capstone senior design project was to design a sustainable, decentralized wastewater treatment and groundwater conservation system. Our designed facility collects and treats locally sourced wastewater and then injects the treated water back into the local aquifer. Recharge would return treated water to an aquifer highly taxed by demand. This practice conserves both the water, and the expense incurred in the treatment and transportation process. Recharging the aquifer will help reduce subsidence, which is a large problem in the area. This concept can be replicated in a network of decentralized-modular facilities with local injection capability that would add resiliency to a community and reduce the demand on a centralized treatment facility.
Our multidisciplinary team consisted of two Civil Engineering undergraduate cohorts. One cohort modeled the three-dimensional groundwater environment using MATLAB, ArcGIS, and ParFlow hydrological modeling software. Datasets used to derive the model configuration include geological maps, well observations, bore-hole soil measurements, and hourly meteorological data from the North American Land Data Assimilation System. The hydrologic simulations involve model spin-up to achieve hydrologic equilibrium, then we injected treated water into the local aquifer to see the effects on water table. The modeling simulations help decide the size of community to target for this type of facility. It also helps to predict the time frame of expected impacts. The second cohort designed the treatment and injection facility. The facility is to be situated on a two-acre lot in a local city utilizing vacant land directly adjacent to the community and along a river. This location is already incorporated into the regional water management system. The facility utilizes seven modular, prefabricated wastewater treatment systems in parallel. The treatment systems are obtained from manufacturers that are as close as possible to the site to minimize environmental impact from transportation. There will be three injection scenarios using 0.5-feet diameter wells: (1) one well drilled to 70-feet injecting 800,000 gallons/day, (2) two wells drilled to 70-feet injecting 400,000 gallons/day each, and (3) two wells drilled to 90-feet injecting 400,000 gallons/day.
The teams were assisted by practicing Professional Engineers who are working in municipal water, structural engineering, and geotechnical engineering disciplines. The full-time faculty on the project specializes in Hydrology and Water Resources.
There was outside consultation and interaction with a Geologist (P.G.), hydrologist, and other professional engineers, as well as visits to local water treatment facilities.
Pacific Coast Highway Restoration Project
Sponsored by California Department of Transportation – District 7
Liaisons: Anthony Ng, P.E.; Derek Higa, P.E.; Nader Gobran, P.E.
Students (Alternative 1): Avelino Benitez, Berk Dikicioglu, Claudia Sifuentes, Geraldine Hernandez, Israel Martinez, Jocelyn Mireles, John Chebabi, Jonathon Chavez De Rosas, Karen Castro, Minh Le, Mohab Teddawis, Mohammed Alshubrumi, Mushal Alsharqi, Samuel Senior, Scarlette Dersarkissian, Wendy Navarete
Students (Alternative 2): Abdul Al-abtah, Andres Perez, Arely Gil, Eduardo Hernandez, Jessica Garcia, Jonathan Pascual, Jonathan Solis, Kevin Arce, Minh Ly, Oscar Tupul, Rodrigo Bubello, Ron Bughusians, Simon Choy, Ubaldo Reyes, Yomaria Bañales-Arellano
Faculty Advisor: Rupa Purasinghe, P.E.; Howard Lum, P.E.; Jason Song, P.E.; John Shamma, P.E.
California’s Pacific Coast Highway (State Route 1) runs north-south for approximately 656 miles connecting regions from Mendocino County to Orange County. PCH is well-known for its scenic views such that several segments of the highway are designated as State Scenic Highway. It is also known for being one of the most dangerous highways in California as it is prone to landslides and coastal erosion. Post mile (PM) 4.0 and 4.2 in Ventura County are segments of PCH that suffer from severe coastal erosion and slope instability on the hillside since early 2014. Caltrans performed temporary repairs in 2015 at PM 4.0 and PM 4.2 by reinforcing the slope with fill material and a rock slope protection wall. However, the high surf waves continued to erode the slope forcing the nearby beach to temporarily close. As a result, a permanent solution is warranted due to the accelerated structural undermining of the roadway.
The purpose of this project is to increase the safety and restore the structural integrity along the Pacific Coast Highway from post mile 4.0 and 4.2. The two main concerns to be addressed are: 1) the eroding shoulder on the coastal side and 2) the slope instability on the hillside. Initially, seven alternatives were presented to Caltrans as a permanent solution which included a bridge, groynes, tunnel, MSE wall, revetments, shotcrete with dolosses, and secant piles. The final alternatives considering cost, aesthetics, safety, environmental impact, etc. selected as plausible permanent solutions were the tunnel and secant piles.
Alternative 1: Secant Piles Alternative
The secant piles alternative calls for a multimodal approach including a secant pile wall, roadway shifting, soil nail walls, and culverts to improve the existing conditions. The roadway would be shifted eight feet inland to provide space for the 1,300-feet long continuous secant pile wall. The secant pile wall would protect the roadway from coastal erosion and the soil nail wall would restore the slope stability. To address the landslide hazard, a culvert would aid in the drainage of any potential stormwater runoff that might soak into the ground underneath of the landslide affected hillside. This alternative would require multiple construction phases due to the constraints of the project location.
Alternative 2: Tunnel Alternative
The tunnel alternative realigns the existing highway with a 3,000-foot-long tunnel through the mountainside, avoiding the coastal erosion and landslide. This bypass would allow for traffic to flow smoothly along a 36-feet wide tunnel and avoid road closures as it would continue to be open during construction. Upon tunnel completion, the existing roadway would be closed and abandoned as maintenance would no longer be necessary. However, the roadway would continue to be monitored for preventative measures. Overall, a tunnel would improve road user safety by protecting against severe weather conditions that make the highway susceptible to landslides and coastal erosion.
Electrical Engineering
Quantifying IV Insertion Metrics for Effective Learning
Sponsored by Cal State LA Nursing Department
Students: Nicholas Martin, Elijah Bicondova, Omar Cojulun, Manual G. Martinez, Abigail Zulueta, Marvin Mendez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Curtis Wang
Inserting an intravenous catheter (IV) is one of the most frequently-performed invasive procedures performed by nurses. Despite this, little research has been conducted on ways to reduce the difficulty or increase the success rate of an IV insertion. This project seeks to remedy this by measuring and analyzing different objective parameters (angle, speed, and position) of the IV catheter during an ordinary IV insertion. If a correlation can be found between these parameters and a successful IV insertion, an opportunity would then arise to create a more effective learning platform for future nursing students.
DOE Solar District Cup
Sponsored by the U.S Department of Energy
Students: Daniel Davalos, Nobab Moinuddin, Brian Elhelou, Gabriel Moran, Kevin Alavez, Mohammed Alshahrani
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Samuel Landsberger
The Solar District Cup challenges multidisciplinary student teams to design and model optimized distributed solar energy systems for a campus or urban district. These systems integrate solar, storage, and other technologies across mixed-use districts, or groups of buildings served by a common electrical distribution feeder. The competition engages students in the engineering, urban planning, finance, and related disciplines to reimagine how energy is generated, managed, and used in a district.
Teams compete in one of multiple divisions, each division structured around a distinct district use case. A winner is selected for each division, based on the quality of their solar energy system design. The strongest designs provide the highest offset of annual energy and greatest financial savings. This is determined by a techno-economic analysis conducted by students and evaluated by judges. The goal is to design, model, and present the most reliable, resilient, and cost-effective system possible.
Optimal Design and Control of a Hybrid PV & Battery
Sponsored by Cal State LA Electrical Engineering Department
Students: Jose Morales, Jose Rea, Axel Ochoa, Kajair Minassian, Co Dang
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Arash Jamehbozorg
The overall objective of this project is to achieve net-zero energy by 2030 for the La Kretz Innovation Center building located in Downtown LA. Our project incorporates an energy storage system(ESS) and the photovoltaic(PV) system to completely cover the building. The main objective of this project is to have the system installed and in working order by 2030. We will incorporate a control system that will be able to control all aspects of the system, mainly the power flow into the building. The control system will have two layers which will take into account both real-time data as well as data logged data the system has previously recorded including load and PV generation. The upper layer will forecast the load consumption and PV generation for the entire week, the lower layer will then redo the calculations done by the upper layer but will focus on smaller time intervals, up to five minutes. Using the calculated data from the lower layer will be used as parameters for an optimization function whose goal is to reduce the cost of operation of the microgrid the function will determine the cheapest way to meet the load demand required by the building whether it is to use the PV system, use the energy stored in the battery, or buy energy from the grid.
Lithium-Ion Battery Management System
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: David Almonte, David Diaz, Patrick Duong, Ammal Nabilsi
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Shahverdi Masood
The scope of work for the Lithium-Ion Battery Management System is to design, develop necessary hardware and software to monitor the states of Lithium-Ion battery variables. This project performed in the module level of the Lithium-Ion battery. The temperature, current, and voltage are among variables of the system that can be measured. Data will be collected and feed into a controller. An algorithm developed in the controller to estimate the state of charge and essential information such as voltage, current, temperature, and the state of charge will be communicated through CAN to the outside of the Battery Management System.
Extracting Characteristics of a Lithium-ion Battery
Sponsored by Cal State LA Electrical Engineering Department
Students: Jesse Vera, David Newman, Arthur Mkrtchian, Israel Vargas Cruz, Jaime Estrada Jr
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Shahverdi Masood
Our Senior Design Project consisted of Lithium-ion batteries/cells. Lithium-ion batteries are known as critical modern energy systems that started being used for transportation and power grid applications. Lithium-ion batteries systems/behaviors tend to be nonlinear and complex. Our team is responsible for characterizing a lithium-ion battery into a circuit model allowing it to be simplified and easier for users to comprehend the behavior. For us to get these behaviors we are running multiple Charging/Discharging capacity test experiments on Lithium-ion batteries. The test applications for characteristics extractions are Capacity tests which are performed through constant current and constant voltage tests. As well as Voltage Open circuit (VOC) which is done by giving rest periods in between the cycles of charging and discharging. After we can take the data and graph it to find a State of Charge (SOC) curve which is done by line fitting charging and discharging rest periods. Using this SOC data we use a MATLAB code created by us to estimate the battery terminal voltage, smallest error margin as well as values of corresponding R1, R2, C1, C2 values of resistors and capacitors that will mimic the behavior in a circuit model. The code is tested using a preset data to confirm it works correctly. Once all the data is collected a model is built to represent our cell.
Green Commuter
Sponsored by Green Commuter
Liaison: Gustavo Occhiuzzo
Students: Helen Argondona, Deion Au, Brian Patterson, Jagtar Singh, Fabiola Vasquez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Michael Thorburn
Green Commuter is working to develop and implement vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology to Green Commuter’s fleet of electrical vehicles (EV) and EV Charging stations. Our goal is to achieve V2G functionality on Green Commuter’s fleet utilizing EV charging solutions network of charging stations to mitigate the duck curve in California. We will be simulating V2G in the Cal State LA campus using Simscape/Simulink. V2G is a method that can regulate frequency and power demand. The team will be producing the algorithm to modulate and flatten the duck curve of Cal State LA load.
Open Conductor Detection on Distribution Lines
Sponsored by Southern California Edison
Liaisons: Robert Preston Lloyd, Shawn Wang, and Ignacio Sanchez
Students: Blair Vidana, Matthew Guzman, Nancy Mardis, Jonathan Estrada, Steven Cheung, Kendrick Lin
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Michael Thorburn
There is an on-going issue of downed power lines that utility companies nationwide are still trying to solve. The downed power lines pose a serious threat to the environment and to the safety of the public. When power lines fall and touch the ground, it causes sparks that can potentially ignite nearby brushes and cause fires or injure nearby civilians. In order to mitigate this threat, they need to be able to monitor and respond when such threat occurs. Under the supervision of Southern California Edison protection engineers, the objective of this project is to develop a relay logic algorithm to detect and de-energize an open conductor before it hits the ground.
Automated Small Package Sort - System Control
Sponsored by UPS
Liaison: Isauro Ramirez
Students: Abdullah Alalawi, Jose Castaneda, Maan Dhawan, Pedro Martínez, Dominiqu Valdez
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Khosrow Rad, Ted Nye
UPS has partnered with California State University of Los Angeles through the ECST Capstone Senior Design Program to create an automated bag sorting system for their Ontario, CA facility. The System Control team, one of three working on the project, oversees the overall command and control of a gantry mounted robot and its assemblies. The team’s goal is to implement a SCADA architecture consisting of a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), operator panel, microcontrollers, and photoelectric sensors. As part of the design process, a variety of systems engineering techniques and approaches to design were implemented such as the analytic hierarchy process to conduct trade studies and the Vee model of design. These techniques enabled the design and construction of custom controllers for the automated system’s many sub functions.
Robotic Odometry
Sponsored by Raytheon
Liaison: Dr. John T. Jacobs
Students: Edwin Rashidian, Ismael Garcia Iglesias, Yong Lo, Angel Montejo, Jorge Vicente
Faculty Advisor: Bob Dempster
In the case of a natural disaster, buildings that were not able to withstand the full force of mother nature tend to crumble to the ground, potentially trapping people underneath all the debris and rubble. In this type of situation Rescue teams are deployed to try and save as many lives as they can, but this is also dangerous for the rescue team to be walking around in the remains of a building that is no longer structurally sound. This project is to deploy a rescue robot that will drive autonomously while avoiding obstacles in the rescue robots path through the rubbles of fallen building, simultaneously taking data from its sensors of its traversed path. The data of the traversed path is then sent to a mission computer wirelessly to map the path the robot has taken; in case the robot fails in the middle of its mission. The mapping would have to be within 5 inches of error from the center of the robot in order to efficiently find the robot in the field if need be.
Using FPGA to Accelerate Machine Learning Workloads
Sponsored by Cal State LA
Liaison: Dr. Charles Liu
Students: Wesam Algaydi, Daniel Lopez, Luis Lopez-Juarez, Wendy Rivera Zavala, Bianca Valdovinos, James Velasco
Faculty Advisor: Airs Lin
The objective of our project is to develop a heterogeneous computing system that runs a machine learning algorithm to classify images. The ideal machine learning algorithm for our project is a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). A CNN, like most machine learning algorithms, requires extensive parallel computations across numerous, large layers in its neural network. Our goal is to accelerate the computations for the workloads of this machine learning algorithm--specifically, the workloads of a single layer named “Softmax” which requires the most complex calculations. Our project aims to prove that a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device is an ideal solution to accelerate these computations. The future work for this project, is to map the rest of the CNN layers on the FPGA board in order to better improve the performance of the system.
Universal Test Platform for COTS Electronics Radiation Testing
Sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation
Liaisons: Dr. John R. Scarpulla, Dr. Allyson D. Yarbrough
Students: Hugo Morales, Marvin Soltero, Edgar Palapa, Luis Tepox, Bryan Smith
Faculty Advisor: Ann Nye
Companies want to fly non-radiation hardened Commercial Off the Shelf (COTs) parts due to their low cost, easy access, and high-tech capabilities. The problem is the impact of radiation when flying these COTS parts in low earth orbits. Radiation present in the inner Van Allen radiation belt, solar particle events from the Sun and intergalactic cosmic rays may cause Single Event Upsets (SEU), soft error rates, and degradation ultimately leading up to electronic component failure. This project will provide a flexible means to test the longevity of these COTS in a radiation environment. A further complication is The Aerospace Corporation wants to isolate the COTS piece parts when testing them in a simulated radiation environment, like a Cobalt 60 Chamber, and use test electronics to drive 10 MHz digital signals across a transmission line from at least 10 feet away.
Artificial Intelligence Server for IoT devices
Sponsored by Saya Life
Liaison: Sanjay Poojary
Students: Pedro Alvarado, Oscar Gomez, Juan Garcia, Angel Enriquez
Faculty Advisor: Mo Zhang
Artificial intelligence can be utilized to determine disruptions in behavior patterns. The purpose of our project is to utilize Artificial Intelligence to detect anomalous behavior in water consumption patterns through the analysis of data. Furthermore, anomalies in water consumption patterns can pose a threat to the consumer as this anomalous event could result in a leak. In this project, we have proposed and evaluated the application of supervised and unsupervised Machine Learning for Anomaly detection. We compare two methods, which are K-means Clustering and Decision Tree which adapts to time series data received from the reading of an ultrasónic water meter. These two programs were selected as the emphasis for the sole purpose of data clustering in order to single out the anomalies. In both methods we first train our algorithms using data obtained by the sensor under normal conditions, then we do the same for both methods but now using anomalous data. In order to give a better understanding and visualization to the audience we decided to integrate the algorithms with an IoT device. The IoT device that we decided to use is a raspberry pi 4 integrated with a seven-inch display. Consequently, we can give the user a better understanding of how the two algorithms work by displaying a graphical representation in the seven-inch display.
Air Quality Sensor
Sponsored by Saya Life
Students: Andrew Seelman, James Baek, Terrence Sarmiento, Lyann Cerritos
Faculty Advisors: Airs Lin, Dr. Charles Liu
The Saya Life Air quality monitoring system is intended to record and display various compounds in the air and communicate that information to Saya life’s gateway. Our project includes four sensors including a CO2 sensor, a TVOC sensor, a Humidity sensor, and a flammable gas sensor. These sensors will all be connected to Saya life’s mainly implemented microcontroller, which is the low power MSP430FR4133. This microcontroller has the capabilities to record all of the relevant sensor data simultaneously and display said data to an LCD screen. The data will be temporarily stored in the microcontroller and sent to a LoRa module which will send OTA information to Saya Lifes’s compatible gateways.
Mechanical Engineering
Venus Wind Harvester Design and Optimization
Sponsored by NASA JPL
Liaison: Dr. Jonathan Sauder
Students: Jeffrey Kim, Osvaldo Castro, Felix Avena, Esteban Hernandez, Vladamir Ryzhanovskiy
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jim Kuo
Venus has one of the most hostile planet environments in the solar system that include a sulfuric gas atmosphere, a surface pressure of 92 bar, and temperatures well over 450oC. With this type of environment, electronics cannot survive to produce the required locomotion. Therefore, the only pragmatic solution to this issue is through wind power that can wind up a mechanical spring to move the vehicle. With the given information, the objective of this project is to apply aerodynamic concepts and optimizing wind turbine designs to produce required mechanical efficiency of over 40% and power output of over 10-Watts in a Venus-like environment. This will be done by utilizing the wind tunnel provided by the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology in California State University of Los Angeles.
Hybrid Rocket Propulsion Unit
Sponsored by Cal State LA Eagle Rocketry Club
Students: Moussa Abou Eid, Louis Alberto Elias, Charles Andrew Herrera, James Hsia, Ruben Jandel Mendez, Emmanuel Reyes
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey S Santner
Hybrid rocket systems involve the use of propellants that are stored separately in two different phases – one as a liquid and the other as a solid. Advantages of hybrid systems over conventional solid/liquid propellant rockets include higher overall safety (because of the fuel separation), their relative simplicity, and the ability to regulate their oxidizer injection rate. The CSULA Eagle Rocketry team has the ambition to complete a hybrid rocket that will give them a competitive edge in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC). Thus, the purpose of this project is to design, optimize, and manufacture this rocket type for use in the IREC. The oxidizing propellant that will be used is nitrous oxide (N2O) whereas the solid propellant will be paraffin wax. The rocket itself must reach a goal altitude of 10,000 feet and also adhere to the IREC’s requirements and guidelines.
Aerodynamics and Rocket Stability
Sponsored by Cal State LA Eagle Rocketry Club
Liaison: Alfonso Mares
Students: Livio Campanotto, Jorge Hernandez, Christopher Merlos, Lionel Ladoh Tiomela, Dennis Villanueva
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Nurullah Arslan
The Eagle Rocketry Club (ERC) at CSULA is a new student organization dedicated to designing, developing and launching a rocket vertically up to 30,000 feet and deploying a CubeSat. The club will attempt to meet this goal at the Spaceport America Cup, an international intercollegiate rocketry competition. To successfully reach an altitude of 30,000 feet the rocket must be highly aerodynamic and maintain stability through its trajectory. The Aerodynamics and Rocket Stability team was sought out to help the club meet its altitude goals. The team is responsible for designing the nose, fuselage and fin components of the rocket that will allow this altitude to be reached. For the nose and fuselage sections, drag forces and maintaining structural integrity are the most important to analyze. Meanwhile, mass distribution and proper fin designs will influence the vehicle’s stability. Ultimately, ERC will be presented with a proposed design developed through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis and will be ready for scaled-down model testing.
Self-Leveling Stand
Sponsored by Boeing
Liaisons: Teofilo El Masri, Jonathan Fish, Jonathan Sanabria, Chijoke Umeh, Jeffrey Iwasaki, Stephanie Colon
Students: Simon Levin, Andres Martinez, Javier Lara, Nicholas Gertlis, Dustin Hong
Faculty Advisor: Dr. J. David Scholler
Boeing uses a manual tool to offload and detach reflectors from satellites that takes hours away from their man labor. Boeing is sponsoring a project to make a design shall save time and labor when detaching these reflectors from the satellites. The project is project number 14 from Senior Design at Cal State LA called, the Automated Self- Leveling Stand. This project is tended to make a self- leveling stand that shall support 150 pounds and hold stiff the detached reflectors to prevent damage while it is being moved from one place to another in the manufacturing and testing process.
Spacecraft Attitude & Control System
Sponsored by NASA JPL
Liaison: Charles Dandino
Students: Marcus Durrell, Oliver Sanchez, Jin Ping Lin, Sal Aguilar, Martin Capati
Faculty Advisor: Xavier Talbot-Thiebaux
An attitude control system for a spacecraft controls the angle of rotation within a certain amount of time. The purpose of this project is to redesign an actuator for a satellite to increase its lifetime. This is very important in capturing pictures of Earth, a star, or any objects in space because these objects are not in one direction, and it takes time for the spacecraft to rotate slightly. One of the goals for this project is to prove that by using lasers as actuators, the spacecraft can make one full rotation within 48 hours. The system has to be able to rotate ten times the mass of the envelope with the actuators. However, this system has to be solid-state with no sliding or rolling components. The reason for this requirement is to elongate the lifetime of the spacecraft in Low-Earth orbit. This attitude control system will be in an envelope that is 30x30x10 mm. The maximum power for the entire order will be 5 watts.
Design and Materials for Improved Dental Implants
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Liaison: Dr. Ramin Mehr
Students: Michelle Virtucio, David Elizaga, Arvin Tarverdi
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Adel Sharif
Dental Implant is a mechanical component that is placed into the bone of the jaw with surgery to give the natural feeling of the lost tooth. It has three part which is screw, abutment and crown. However, same as any other mechanical components they have their own problems or in other words failures. There are two major dental implant failures which are biological failure and mechanical failure. Dental implant improvement team’s main focus is regarding mechanical failure of dental Implants. Mechanical failure of dental implant has different categories such as abutment failure, crown failure and main screw failure. However, in most cases the abutment and crown fail which are our main focus. Our team is putting all the info and data together to design a dental implant that has a less failure rate than the current dental implant. There are two main approaches that we focused on. The first one is to design a dental abutment that has a damping moment and shock resistance by putting micro wholes inside the abutment which will get the force from the normal bite and acts as a spring and the other design is about the dental crown without cement. This method will not require dental cement or glue to hold the crown. Instead, it will have locks that keep the crown on its place. This method will help dentists to change the failed crown much easier and faster.
Improved Sarmiento Brace Project
Sponsored by UC Davis Medical
Liaison: Patrick Michelier
Students: Nicholas Cusato, Jorge Zepeda, Carlos Benavides Moran, Kevin Alonso, Colin Jeong
Faculty Advisor: Everardo Hernandez
The Sarmiento brace remains a convenient and alternative treatment approach to the conventional cast for certain types of humeral fractures. These braces function to keep the humerus straight throughout the healing process by compressing the soft tissue surrounding the fracture. It is primarily left up to the patient to keep the brace tight to maintain proper soft tissue compression as inflammation in the arm decreases. However, these braces can be cumbersome to operate considering that one must do so with a broken arm; thus, it is not uncommon for patients to neglect to keep their brace properly tight, which negatively impacts treatment outcomes in clinic. The improved Sarmiento brace project is responsible for the research and development of a humeral fracture brace capable of maintaining constant compression on the arm regardless of any decrease in inflammation without requiring any patient intervention.
Phlebotomist Practice Arm
Sponsored by Cal State LA Nursing Department
Liaison: Dr. Angela Williams
Students: Victor Gomez, Susana Corcios, Minerva Miramontes, Faustino Corona, Syed Jeffri Syed Muaz
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mathias Brieu
Dummy arms for nursing practices are essential tools used to provide medical students with hands on learning experiences. They are meant to immerse students into a real-life scenario where they can learn and make mistakes in a risk-free environment enabling them to be better prepared for the real world. During the fall semester, a team of mechanical engineering students have done the necessary background research into the current dummy arms being used in the medical field and how they are not meeting desired requirements. After weeks of preliminary research, several concept designs were made within the consideration of the project requirements. The purpose of this project is to design, build, and test a newly designed dummy arm with easily maintainable features that are more realistic and anatomically correct to a human arm. Such features include easily replaceable skin sheets, adjustable blood pressure, variable vein movements, and an overall design that the nursing department will be able to operate with ease.
Measuring Leaks in Buried Pipes
Sponsored by Sempra Southern California Gas
Liaisons: Jerone Powell, Daniel Lopez, Ricardo Vargas
Students: Zac Benavidez, Brandon Hernandez, Alexis Rios, Astrid Rodriguez, Alfonso Suarez
Faculty Advisor: Everardo Hernandez
In the natural gas industry, there is a need to mitigate environmental impacts of natural gas operations. To address this issue, there needs to be a reduction of gas leaks. Part of the process entails taking surface-flux-rate measurements at ground level to quantify leaks from buried natural gas service lines. The team’s objective is to design and build a portable, adjustable light-weight enclosure to capture and funnel emissions to an existing pump and analyzer configuration. To achieve this the team will create several prototypes and optimize the designs to fit the customer’s requirements.
Seismic and Wind Vibration Mitigation
Sponsored by Southern California Edison
Liaisons: John Dai, Alex Lee, Florizel Bautista
Students: Luis Ayala, Jessie Chavez-Sierra, Dorian Grey-Angeles, Walter Pelayo, Eduardo Zavala
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Michael Thorburn, Dr. Steve Felszeghy
Southern California Edison (SCE) operates numerous substations throughout Southern California that are equipped with two different line drop system configurations that are both being held in place by a counter-weight system. Unfortunately, the counter-weight system is failing due to seismic and daily wind vibrations, which causes the entire line drop system to fail. Therefore, the project goal was to design a damper system that could dampen the seismic and wind vibrations while also having very low maintenance required. To accomplish this the team had to design several different models, use simulation and live testing and further analyze the systems through FEA analysis
Solar Shower
Sponsored by the Solar Showers for All Project
Liaison: Sam Koh
Students: Bandar Aljohani, Miguel Bernal, Catherine Velasco, Israel Rodriguez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Samuel Landsberger
Solar Shower is a project designed to incorporate solar energy in an existing mobile shower system.The mobile showering system is enclosed in a 14-foot-trailer that was customized by our sponsor Hillside Church. Hillside Church runs the mobile shower once a week as a part of a non-profit project aimed at helping the homeless community of El Sereno. Sam Koh, a pastor and liaison for Hillside Church, expressed that the two main problems with the current system were the water pump burning out after a short period of time and the lack of storage space in the trailer for more water; he mentioned that his goal was to double the showering capacity while at the same time reducing the project’s carbon footprint. The system originally used a small propane gas tank that connected to the water heating unit that provided warm water to the system. Since our goal was to reduce the amount of propane being used while at the same time increasing storage capacity, we decided to build a greenhouse box located on the roof of the trailer that would heat specially designed water bags through solar radiation. Our first prototype enclosed four bags of 10 gallons each, with our ultimate goal being to heat a total of 100 gallons of water by using a second larger greenhouse that would be able to heat the remaining 60 gallons. We also decided to use an air compressor to circulate the water because that would eliminate the issue of the pump burning up while also giving the operators of the showering system the flexibility of compressing the air using DC current if needed, and when on location, the ability to use battery power only intermittently to maintain the system pressurized.
Motorcycle Helmet Drop Test Apparatus
Sponsored by 6D Helmets
Liaison: Mr. Robert Reisinger
Students: Vu La, Alejandro Bustos, Pablo Lara Jauregui, Randeep Singh, Heriberto Cruz Ramirez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. David Raymond
The objective of the project is to develop a Helmet Drop Test Tower that performs linear and rotational drop testing for motorcycle helmets. The current testing standards for motorcycle helmets in the United States do not include rotational impacts and are only for linear impacts. These standards are set by the Department of Transportation (DOT), Snell Foundation, and the Consumer Product Safety Committee (CPSC). Due to the unpredictable nature of contact sports, rotational impacts must be analyzed. Biomechanics research shows that there is a strong correlation between concussions and the rotational accelerations during impacts on the head since brain tissue is more easily deformed due to shear forces caused by rotational accelerations. The Free Head Drop feature of the test tower utilizes a drop ring and drop shuttle to carry a test object that collides with a sturdy anvil offset from the center of gravity. The Head-Neck “Pendulum” feature of the test tower utilizes a pendulum arm structure and a drop anvil connected to a shuttle to study rotational energy delivered to the Hybrid III head form.
Low-Speed Crash Sled
Sponsored by Cal State LA Applied Injury Biomechanics Lab
Liaison: Dr. David Raymond
Students: Jonathan Mendoza, Bryan Nguyen, Arnaldo Rendon, Josimar Sanchez, Arturo Sandoval
Faculty Advisors: Dr. David Raymond
A crash sled system is used by automotive research and development laboratories to study the motion and forces of vehicle occupants during a simulated car crash. This device allows for a repeatable method by which to study crash-related occupant loading without the time and expense of performing full-scale vehicle crashes. The Applied Injury Biomechanics Lab is currently researching the response of the human lumbar spine during low- to moderate-speed rear-end collisions. Full-sized crash sleds can run well over one million dollars. The goal of this senior design project is to design a low-cost, scaled-down crash sled capable of conducting crash simulations with speed changes up to 10 mph.
Low NOx Natural Gas Burner
Sponsored by Sempra Energy
Students: Ethan Balancio, Bryan Rodriguez, Rene Flores, Jorge Majano
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey S. Santner
This project explores the feasibility of limiting nitrogen oxide (NOx) formation from natural gas combustion. To combat the effects of climate change, manufacturing and automotive industries implement engineering controls to reduce pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx). Natural gas combustion results in chemical reactions with oxygen molecules in the air to create carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and vaporized water (H20). However, high flame temperatures break apart the strong triple bonds of nitrogen molecules (N2) resulting in recombination with oxygen atoms by the Zeldovich mechanism. Rich air-fuel mixtures decrease NOx formation but increase toxic carbon monoxide (CO) gas. Lean air fuel mixtures reduce CO but result in NOx formation. To address both issues, exhaust gas cooling and recirculation are integrated into this design. This design’s exhaust gas recirculating (EGR) system uses a pump to inject air into the fuel line which allows control over air supply for combustion. Recycled gases are also driven by a low-pressure pump to redirect combustion gases back into the main natural gas line. This results in oxygen dilution and combustion heat absorption leading to lower flame temperature and reduced NOx formation. A heat sink is also incorporated into this design to reduce the temperature of the exhaust gas entering the EGR system. Heat sinks are devices used to cool equipment by both conductive and convective heat transfer. This device has fins attached to the outer surface which increase surface area and create a longer path for gas to travel. This longer path allows gas more time to cool down during its recirculation to the burner. This design was modeled from engineering controls to reduce NOx from diesel engine combustion.
Optimization of Vapor Mitigation Extraction Systems
Sponsored by SWAY Features
Students: William Harjanto, Carlos Mendez, Jesus Mestas, Alan Ochoa, Ulysses Rodriguez
Faculty Advisor: Sean Kaligi
In the city of Los Angeles, methane mitigation has become a necessity given the city is a hot bed for methane. Certain areas in the city have high concentrations of methane, in the past tragedy has stricken due to high concentrations of methane. There was an incident that was the catalyst for Los Angeles creating and enforcing a law that forces all buildings built within a specific area of high methane concentration to require a methane mitigation system. The indecent was in 1985, a Ross exploded in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. It was found that methane had built up in the basement and eventually an ignition caused the building to explode. This buildup of methane can easily be detected by today's standard mitigation systems and be taken care of. The goal of our project is to optimize the systems currently in industry, given that the field is relatively young or in its infancy being only 30 years old. There is a lot of room for optimization in the field of methane mitigation and the team will focus on a specific aspect of these systems. The team will deliver a tool used to optimize the fan size for any system, including commercial and residential systems. Thus, reducing unnecessary costs like those from a system utilizing an oversized fan which is the case for most of the systems out today.
Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) for Bicycle
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Abdullah Alghunaim, Enrique Alvillar, Guillermo Beas, Wenjie Guan, Dominick Mammolito
Faculty Advisor: Ramon Garcia
The Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) for a bicycle project aims to create a more efficient bicycle. During normal operation of a bicycle most of the kinetic energy of the bike is lost when slowing down to a stop, and most of the energy input required is to get the bike moving again from a stop. The goal is to develop and implement a kinetic energy recovery system for a bike that uses regenerative braking to store energy that can be later used to propel the bike to get it moving again. This will be done using a flywheel to store energy and a clutch system to engage and disengage the flywheel as desired.
Industrial Technology & Graphic Communication
Portable House on the Go for the Homeless
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Students: Jose Gonzales, Ryan Lych, Dario Miguel, Donaldo Pereira, Michel Romero, and Justin Tan
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
The functionality of the portable bed is to help with the situation of homeless people that has been increasing in California throughout the years. In terms of a place to sleep, most homeless people use a tent to stay warm but there is an issue with the setup and take down time. We decided to create a portable housing for the use of homeless people regardless of location with reduced setup time. Applied skills range from 3D design, material selection, machining to the lathe and milling process, and metal part welding.
Decorative Craft
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Students: Aldo Garcia, Samuel Huang, Adrian Mora, Nicolae Nedelcu, Luis Savedra, and Randy Sieng
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
Decorative Craft is a project that integrates a multitude of skills and knowledge base acquired at CSULA Industrial Technology Department. The project consists of different types of figurines designed in SolidWorks and manufactured using MakerSpace’s laser cutter. The project could be used for various scopes, such as an educational tool, an aide for individuals with cognitive disabilities skills, model and mockup designs for architecture and wind tunnel test or as a decorative set or ornament.
Engineered Dutch Design Tea Table & Chairs
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Students: Uriel Banuelos, Bernardo Diaz, Joaquin Flores, Bryan Phinney, Paul Steward, and Pablo Torres-Davalos
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
We are to design and create usable furniture strictly made out of cardboard, and using only cardboard structures to hold the designs together. Our designs were inspired by the Dutch Design Company that specializes in cardboard products ranging from napkins to wine cases that can be used as stools. Our group has designed, created, and built 3 tables that are supposed to hold at least 400 pounds, 5 chairs that must hold at least 350 pounds, and 5 stools that can also be used as an end table. Our design can be very useful for any age group and college dorm rooms. All three of our designs have completely surpassed the goals that were set forth to us at the beginning of last semester.
Cal State LA Coat of Arms
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Students: Omar Ali, Alexander Banos, Elio Barrera, Nicholas Gilmore, Yoselyn Salgado, Ricardo Vargas, and Jeremy Yu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
The Graphic Communications (Group 4) was tasked with designing a “Coat of Arms” to represent Cal State LA and show its heraldry. The Coat of Arms represents the six colleges with their individual identification symbols. The “Coat of Arms” also has a slightly updated mascot and pays homage to the iconic library. The “Coat of Arms” will be represented in the shape of a shield that will be duplicated into embroidered patches, stickers, and an actual life-sized wooden shield.
Robotic Rescue Snake
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Students: Ruben Cardiel, Edgar Flores-Villalobos, Fredy Jandres, Jesus Martinez, LaLonnie Swagger, Josie Vazquez, Jovar Williams, Nivardo Zuzuarregui
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
Natural disasters are an unpredictable epidemic in society. Whether it be tsunamis, tornados, or California’s proneness to earthquakes, once the damage has begun, we can only hope to respond shortly after. That is where the Senior Design Project for Team 5 (sustainability) comes into play. In order to save lives, Team 5’s goal is to create a robotic snake to assist in search and rescue operations. This device will allow for adaptive mobility through any terrain as well as the ability to see and traverse in tight spaces. The versatility of the snake, alongside its affordability, allow it to be operated by almost anyone with minimal training.
Produce ISO 9001:2015 Manual for L.A. Lighting
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Liaison: Los Angeles Lighting Manufacturing Co.
Students: Carla Harris, Octavio Renteria, and Brian Torres
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
Quality Management is essential when providing goods or services. The International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 9001:2015- Quality Management Systems defines the guiding principles that can be used to create efficiencies by aligning and streamlining processes throughout the organization. Los Angeles Lighting is a family owned manufacturing company in East Los Angeles and it is our objective to create an ISO 9001:2015 manual for them in an effort to bring down costs, create new opportunities, meet regulatory requirements, and help the organization expand into new markets. Along with increasing LA Lighting’s competitive edge, we gain an understanding of the potential for any organization in the market to improve their bottom line by implementing ISO standards.
Creative Essences Work Instructions
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST, Department of Technology
Liaison: Creative Essences
Students: Alwaleed Ayyad, Mason Bowles, and Alejandra Garcia
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Paul Liu
The main project for Group 6B is to take responsibility for the creation of about 20-30 visual work instructions, which will form the backbone of our ISO 9001 documentation requirements. Phase 1 of the project will be to supplement the company's existing procedures and work instructions with visual aids (photos) to add clarity to the written instructions that already exist. This will be done to gain practice and familiarity with the operation. Phase 2 of the project will be the CSLA students interviewing the workers, leads and supervisors on the production floor and taking notes to document whether they are following the current procedures and work instructions. If non-conformities are found, the student will write a nonconformity report that will feed into the internal audit.
Interdisciplinary
CubeSat Solar Sail Deployment System
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Liaison: Dr. Michael Thorburn
Students: Ahmed Basfar, Brandon Brownell, Arianna Fatahi, Luis Medel, Adrian Morales, Johanna Sanchez
Faculty Advisor: Karl Salinas
Unlike traditional spacecraft which utilize burning propellant to accelerate and borrowing angular momentum from larger bodied planets to orbit, solar sail spacecraft are driven by the momentum of photons from the sun. This technology can be accelerated to speeds that a traditional combustion motor cannot attain. An effective system relies on maximizing the surface area of the sail to gather more sunlight; therefore, it is crucial to minimize stowage and deployment of the solar sails. In adherence to NASA’s specifications, a 3U CubeSat was designed and constructed with a deployment mechanism for two solar sails. Images of various phases of the solar sail deployment were captured and transmitted to the ground computer at a one-mile range.
Field of View Detection System
Sponsored by Boeing
Liaisons: Makenzie Mason, Cameron Massy, Jose Armenta, Carrie Laponza, Chelsey Tank
Students: Anthony Tran, Brent Cano, Albert Ramirez, Jose Arceo, Randy Mendiola
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Charles Liu, Airs Lin
A field of view (FOV) is the observable area which can be seen by a sensor. Many modules and subsystems, such as optical sensors, often rely on a clear FOV to their target. However, problems can occur if an obstruction is detected, rendering the functions of those systems inoperable. By providing a system that verifies the FOV of a sensor or module, those problems can be avoided. Identification of obstructions during early assembly will prevent future problems that can occur after deployment of a satellite. The scope of the project involves designing and prototyping a system to identify obstructions within the FOV of a sensor or module. In this project, students will utilize both electrical and mechanical engineering aspects in software, sensors, micro controllers, CAD design, kinematic mechanisms and stress analysis to achieve the requirements of the system.
Deorbiting CubeSat Debri from Lower Earth Orbit (LEO)
Sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation
Liaison: Edgar Herrera
Students: Jimmy Lopez, Arturo Urbano, Jesus Valadez, Ricardo De La Cerda
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Robert Doll
In this project, we will design and build a capture mechanism as well as a deorbiting mechanism for a 3U CubeSat. We are expected to capture decommissioned CubeSats that are within the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), which is from 200km to 2000km above the Earth’s surface. The space within the 3U CubeSat that we were allocated is 1.5U, which is 10cm by 10cm by 15 cm. The team will design a capture mechanism, which utilizes electronic sensors programmed with a microcontroller, and a deorbiting mechanism to fit within the allocated space. Designing a CubeSat that allows us to fulfill our objective will allow us to achieve our overall goal in reducing the space debris within LEO.
Bi-Axial Tension Equipment
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST and Dr. Mathias Brieu
Liaison: Dr. Mathias Brieu
Students: Onyx Shahryar Ahmad, Jerilyn Carol Hinahon, Alleine Padernal, Zoheb Mateen
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mathias Brieu
Bi-axial tension testing is essential to evaluate the varying mechanical properties of fibrous soft tissue. The horizontal bi-axial testing machine functions to test soft tissue immersed in saline solution to apprehend their effective in-vivo mechanical behavior. The bi-axial tension equipment is a bio-medical research equipment to measure force distribution along two axes independently with respect to displacement and identify tissue behavior under cyclic loading. The project has been divided into four fundamental sections; a linear motion system to pull a soft tissue at a controllable slower speed, load cells to measure forces on the surface of a tissue, a high-tech camera to analyze the displacement of multiple points of interests on the tissue at the same time independently and an assembly of the parts which will allow noiseless experiment on soft tissue under saline solution.
Project Mexico: Solar Power Monitoring System
Sponsored by Cal State LA, Engineers for a Sustainable World
Liaison: Dr. Theodore Nye
Students: Bryan Castillo, Christopher Rodriguez, Kevin Molina, Kevin Reyes, Ramiro Martinez, Esteban Sifuentes, and Daniel Galindo
Faculty Advisor: Mo Zhang
Installing solar panels into a rural area in Mexico is no easy or inexpensive task to accomplish. It costs thousands of dollars to implement it, now imagine the system being compromised due to someone’s inadvertent actions due to their lack of understanding of the system. What if I told you that the issue could be prevented by creating a monitoring system that could alert you when the system starts running into issues? Essentially that is what our project is all about. It monitors the systems, which are in Mexico, and allows for our client to monitor the system remotely without having the need to physically be in Mexico. This allows our client to be able to send help before the issues begin to rise and it essentially is saving everyone time, energy, and money.
Automated Small Package Sort – Bag Handling
Sponsored by UPS
Liaisons: Rigo Gutierrez, Edwin Otubuah
Students: Abdulaziz Alaklabi, Alexandra Dela Rosa, Stephen Lopez, Damian Ruiz, Felix Sanchez, Mario Valdez
Faculty Advisor: Ted Nye
The UPS Bag Handling’s objective is to design and fabricate a fully automated small bag sorting machine for UPS facilities. The mechanical engineering team oversees the design and fabrication of all the mechanisms, which includes a bag opener, bag closer, bag zipper, bag gripper, and bag labeler. The design must be able to handle large 70-pound bags through repetitive cycles to close, zip, label, and transport the bag from one location to the next. The finite element method was essential to predetermine stress concentrations and deformations of each mechanism under direct load. Additionally, the electrical engineering team was responsible for harness and steering control for autonomous operations.
Automated Small Package Sort – Bag Restocking
Sponsored by UPS
Liaison: Jeromy Mehr
Students: Ahmad Abdulrahman M. Alobayed, Leonardo Franzoso, Allen Raymond Dumaua, David Enrique Villalobos, Maher Ibrahim Al Musallam, Alejandro Contreras
Faculty Advisor: Ted Nye
The Bag Restocking is one of three projects at California State University-Los Angeles sponsored by United Parcel Service (UPS) to automate their small package sort. This project is responsible of designing and building an automated cart that will restock empty bags to the small package sort station. The Cart shall move around and restock the bags using its own electric power. It will be controlled by humans through manual override such as a joystick, or by a Programmable Logic Controller that will enable it to communicate with the other sections of the system to prevent overlapping.
Stirling Engine Experiment Design
Sponsored by Cal State LA Thermal Lab
Liaison: Dr. Jim Kuo
Students: Oscar Cortez, Mohammed Alharthy, Jonathan Larios, Julio Cano
Faculty Advisors: Dr. J. David Scholler
The CSULA Thermal Systems Lab wishes to offer students hands on learning where thermodynamic and heat transfer principles can be observed. As of right now, the thermal lab’s curriculum mainly covers heat transfer concepts. The objective for the project is to design and develop a functional test experiment by equipping a Stirling engine with various sensors and data acquisition hardware to demonstrate and test its thermodynamic properties. This includes the production of the Stirling Cycle's pressure-volume diagram. Students will then analyze the collected data and apply thermodynamic principles and theories to better understand these concepts.
3D Printer for Concrete Structures
Sponsored by Cal State LA Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Laboratory
Students: Arthur Maciel, Kimberly Ventura, Ka Mun Lee, Henry Chau, Sergio Rodriguez
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mohsen Eshraghi
Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing technology, brings innovative changes to the future of development. 3D printing with concrete can be used to change traditional construction methods within the industry. This new method of developing structures promotes cost efficiency by less material usage, faster construction times, reduced labor-intensive work, and more freedom for design. This technology is of most value in the construction industry and during natural disasters. To accomplish this goal, knowledge of additive manufacturing is required to understand the properties and characteristics to 3D print concrete material. The scope of this project is to design, test, and build a cost efficient, large-scale 3D printer for processing concrete to build structures. The techniques used for this project, include computer-aided drawings and simulation, prototype modeling, design analysis, manufacturing, microcontroller programming, and electrical/mechanical fabrication and assembly.
Robosub Competition
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Joseph Iorio, Kevin Ma, Stephanie Godina, Sidra Gibeault, Danny Huynh, Arnold Morales
Faculty Advisor: Dr. He Shen
The RoboSub Competition is an annual international competition that allows multiple universities from around the world to design, build, and compete with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV’s). The competition requires the AUV to manipulate and identify objects, navigate an unknown environment, and complete tasks autonomously. Cal State LA has competed in the competition annually since 2017. The scope of this project is to develop an entirely new AUV to compete in the 2020 competition. Creating a new vehicle required a full design-build-test development cycle across multiple engineering disciplines. The mechanical engineering team designed the hull, frame, and actuators for the vehicle, while the electrical team developed the hydrophones, power management, and sonar systems.
Delivery Robot
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Alexander Pedroza, David Rivera, Jessica Heredia, Junhong Teng, Misael Duran, Sam Chang
Faculty Advisor: Mo Zhang
The scope of this project is to design and implement an autonomous delivery robot. The delivery robot should have the capability to deliver a package to a predetermined destination and avoid objects that are encountered when en route to deliver the package. The main components of the robot are designing and building a container to guard all crucial components. Autonomous movement will help guide the rover in transit to its destination. This will be accomplished by getting familiar with tools such as SolidWorks, Gazebo, Python, raspberry pi and Robot Operating System (ROS).
Two Wheeled Obstacle Avoidance Robot (2WOAR)
Sponsored by Raytheon
Liaison: Dr. John T. Jacobs
Students: Eric Lam, Andrew Fernandez, Byron Lara, Brandon Tomka, Orlando Garcia
Faculty Advisor: Bob Dempster
The project was to design and make a multiple input robot that is sponsored by Raytheon. The project is a continuous project that was started in 2018-2019. The requirements were to make the robot balance itself on two wheels, detect/avoid obstacles within 4 feet, and have wireless communication through radio frequency to a secondary microcontroller
Iron Meteorite Imaging System
Sponsored by Arizona State University, NASA JPL
Liaison: Dr. Catherine Bowman
Students: Angel Gonzales, Raymond Lu, Vincent Rich, Benjamin Campos
Faculty Advisors: Ofelia Quintero, Jose Luis Perez
ASU possesses thousands of prepared iron meteorites and wants to photograph them all so that they can be characterized and the resulting data can be used for machine-learning. The data will be used to compute the composition of iron meteorites visually, without chemical or physical analysis. Vignetting, glare, optical distortion, color inaccuracies, image noise, over/under exposure should be avoided. Meteorite samples should be systematically and uniformly photographed. Image capture should be fully automated, with the push of a single button, samples should be protected and stabilized throughout the capture process, minimal aberrations should be present in images. A rigid structure with intelligent lighting, a computer-connected camera and leveling-sensors allow for repeatable and quick photography of samples.
Gun Zone Disabler
Sponsored by Cal State LA Criminalistics Department
Liaison: Professor Johnson
Students: Jesus Ramirez, James Arredondo, Roberto Ramos, Hassin Monroy
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Zanj Avery
In recent years the United States has had an alarming number of mass shooting violence, 14 out of the 18 worst mass shootings in the United States have taken place within the past decade alone. Because of this the purpose of this project was to design a mechanism which would stop a firearm from being able to discharge when in a predefined “no-fire” zone. This is accomplished by using GPS coordinates to locate the firearm and if the gun is in the no-fire zone then a servo motor would drive a linkage mechanism and move the mechanism to physically block the trigger from being able to be pulled. The mechanism was designed to have as minimal impact on the firearm’s design as possible, be easily manufactured for mass production, and be easily incorporated to multiple types of firearms with as very little modifications possible.
2nd Generation Building Testbed
Sponsored by NSF CREST
Students: Alexis Kam, Brenda Gaytan, Daniel Hernandez, Eduardo Conde, Erwinn Luu
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Arturo Pacheco-Vega
Large city buildings are the highest consumers of energy, accounting for as much as 75% of overall energy consumption. This extensive use of energy makes buildings a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and major contributor to climate change. The purpose of this project is to design and build a testbed to research solutions to limit energy waste in the building sector. The facility is designed to model a standard office building on a cost effective and easily controllable small scale (1ft:1in). The facility will be used to discover ways to reduce energy usage by testing different wall materials and configurations, and maximizing the efficiency of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The testbed has been optimized to incorporate a modular system for swapping walls to test various materials, and sensors for data acquisition.
Harbor Cleaner
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Kasandra Castaneda, Alyson Dizon, Edgard Sosa, Rinaldo Tanny, Esteban Villalobos
Faculty Advisors: Ron Sobchik, Dr. Ray Manning
The scope of work for the Harbor Cleaner project is to design, develop, and deliver a remote-controlled vessel that can collect debris and fit under the pier at the Port of Long Beach. At the Port of Long Beach, namely Pier F, the pier is overrunning with trash ranging from cigarettes to wooden logs and is compiled of 6-foot-long pilings. By designing a mechanism that considers these conditions, the project was divided into subsections that include the frame, propulsions, collections, and electrical subsystems. Through implementing methods that would consider the aquatic vessel to be compact, durable, and inexpensive, the team hopes to deliver a vessel that is suitable to clean up the pier.
Baja SAE - Data Acquisition and Analysis for Vehicle Design
Sponsored by Cal State LA Baja SAE
Students: Juan Manuel Cortes, Reggie Lau, Alexander Leon, Adam Rico, Juan Sebastian Leguizamon
Faculty Advisor: Dr. John Christopher Bachman
The Cal State LA Baja Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) student organization aims to compete with hundreds of other universities to design, engineer, and build a single-seater, off-road vehicle. The Baja vehicle is built within SAE guidelines and designed to test speed, maneuverability, and durability in competition. The purpose of the project is to improve the suspension components of the vehicle by utilizing a data acquisition system to aide designs in reliability and overall performance. This is achieved by analyzing the data received from pressure sensors, strain gauges, and finite element analysis models on specific components of the suspension which include: Upper/Lower Control Arms, Uprights, Hubs, and Kingpins.
Formula SAE – Engine Integration
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Alexandro Castaneda, Christian Garcia, Rafael Castro, Enrique Hernandez, Rene Santiago, Colin Truong
Faculty Advisor: Dr. John Christopher Bachman
Formula SAE is a student design competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that challenges students to design, engineer, manufacture, and compete with a small formula-style vehicle. This vehicle is then subjected to two different types of events: static events that consist of a vehicle technical inspection, a manufacturing cost presentation, a design presentation, and dynamic events, which consist of testing the vehicle under different race courses, such as autocross and endurance. These events allow students to excel above and beyond the classroom by applying classroom knowledge outside of the classroom, and also takes into consideration real-life scenarios that also involve budgeting, design, and manufacturing aspect. This Senior Design Capstone project aims to challenge students to work with a newer, more modern powertrain and drivetrain platform that the Formula SAE team at Cal State LA has never utilized; the entire rear suspension geometry is also designed, taking into consideration of the new drivetrain needed to be implemented. By developing a strong baseline for future FormulaSAE teams at CalStateLA, optimization of the newer vehicle will be much more feasible than previous years.
Personal Hybrid Vehicle
Sponsored by Cal State LA ECST
Students: Wejdan Alharbi, Rashed Almarwan, David Canizales, Darren Chirino, Tony Rios
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Adel Sharif
Traffic congestion in large metropolitan cities like Los Angeles is a part of every residence daily life. Commuters spend an average of 119 hours a year sitting in their vehicles. The goal of the Personal Hybrid Vehicle (PHV) project is to fuse the mobility and size of a tadpole tricycle with an efficient electric motor powertrain into a small footprint to circumvent current vehicle alternatives. Traffic regulation will be influenced by a much smaller vehicle that could rival traditional cars. The Personal Hybrid Vehicle will feature a fully independent double wishbone front suspension to give drivers a similar feel to cars. In addition, the hybrid powertrain which includes traditional bike pedaling and a powerful DC motor will be partially powered by a solar panel integrated into the system to extend its range.