WHO: Senior industrial engineering students at Rutgers University
WHEN: Friday, Dec. 7, 2007, 8:20 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
WHERE: First floor lobby and lecture hall, CoRE Building, 96 Frelinghuysen Road on the Busch Campus in Piscataway. (Parking available in lots at end of Brett Road)
BACKGROUND: A system that monitors the health and well-being of elderly people living alone, a shopping cart that guides store customers to the items on their lists, and a vending machine that notifies suppliers when it needs to be restocked are among the engineering solutions to real-world problems that industrial engineering students at Rutgers University will exhibit in the ninth annual Design of Engineering Systems presentations.
The program serves as a learning tool for graduating seniors and a talent search for companies looking for new industrial engineers. Students work in teams to design and implement solutions; they then explain and demonstrate the solutions to fellow classmates, faculty and industry representatives.
To arrive at their solutions, teams pull together their knowledge of physics, dynamics, materials properties, manufacturing processes and more, said E. A. Elsayed, professor of industrial and systems engineering. Then they use their skills of presenting, just as engineers do in their everyday jobs.
A summary of projects with the names and hometowns of team members follows.
Home Alone Monitoring System, by Rocco Avena, Lincoln Park; Harrison Koppell, East Brunswick; Dennis Sheehan, Haddonfield; and Stephanie Urbano, Parlin. The system demonstrates a complete caring system for an aging person by using sensors. Sensors installed in a mattress help determine how long a person has slept; other mechanisms monitor a persons blood pressure, heart rate, medication and meal preparation. Alarms via cell phones and Web sites can be issued to notify neighbors, relatives or emergency services. A persons health status could be accessed from anywhere using the Internet.
Paint Mixer, by Brian Dawson, Burlington; Jatin Nishawala, North Brunswick; Jacqueline Pilch, Piscataway; and Fiorella Rodriguez, Morristown. Producing custom paint colors for retail sale typically involves manual intervention. An operator starts with a base color and adds drops of other colors based on an established formula. In many cases, the resulting color does not match the users request and the recipe is adjusted manually. This project demonstrates a self-contained, fully automated color mix system in which computer menus select the desired color. The system will blend the colors according to predefined instructions, then paint a sample on a surface and compare it, using a vision system, to the desired color. If they match, the system will then determine the number of gallons of paint needed based on the area to be painted and the number of layers to be applied. If the sample does not match, the system adjusts the color accordingly until a match occurs.
Smart Shopping Cart, by Wan Yee Chan, Towaco; Yi-Hsuan Chen, Taipei, Taiwan; Omar Findakly, West Paterson; Talaha Khan, Edison. Shoppers in typical supermarkets will occasionally forget to buy items they intended to acquire. This demonstrates a smart shopping cart system where a customer chooses items through a Web-based menu and uploads the list into the carts onboard computer. The smart cart then guides the shopper through the aisles, reminding him or her of which items to pick from each aisle. The cart should determine the optimum route and exclude aisles that have no items on the list. It will, however, alert the shopper to potential discounts or sales on items previously bought in those aisles.
Low-Cost Low-Altitude Aerial Resupply, by Ravi Bharadwaj, Westfield; Joseph Cusick, Hillsborough; Alvaro Sevilla, Piscataway; Andrew Tang, Merrick, N.Y. In many situations, soldiers in the field require delivery of items such as meals, medical supplies, water and fuel. A possible delivery method releases a cargo package from aircraft and allows it to fall to the ground without a parachute. This project demonstrates an inexpensive ($100 or less) package that could hold 100-200 pounds of supplies and survive a drop from a slow-moving, low-flying aircraft. The package could be easily recovered by one or two soldiers without material handling equipment.
Efficient Vending Machine, by Abdelrazak Hindy, Edison; Steven Pauls, Old Bridge; Manisha Tripathi, East Windsor. Sophisticated automation has revolutionized the vending machine industry, historically considered low-tech. This project demonstrates an efficient vending system that tracks inventory levels, places reorders and monitors cash. It has a mechanism to remotely change the item prices in response to market conditions; the system can use different methods to transmit and present data to operators, such as wireless communications and Web browsers.
Contact:
Carl Blesch
732-932-7084, ext. 616
Email: cblesch@ur.rutgers.edu