ECE Senior Design Day 2018

On Friday December 7, 2018, NC State Seniors in Electrical and Computer Engineering revealed their projects at Engineering Design Day.

On Friday December 7, 2018, NC State Seniors in Electrical and Computer Engineering revealed their projects at Engineering Design Day. Five individual competitions were held, three for full-scale prototypes of finished projects and two for in-progress project proposals that will be prototyped in the Spring.

The ECE Senior Design experience is a two-semester course (ECE 484\ECE 485) designed to prepare students for the workplace through hands-on experience in the design and development of a real-world solution. Students learn about the product life cycle and about development processes utilizing system engineering and project management techniques. “They’ve definitely gone above and beyond,” said one of the sponsors from Schneider Electric about the Automated EMC Calibration Device. “Being able to have a team that can work this dynamically is an asset to companies.”

Working in teams, students start with a problem statement, then define product requirements, evaluate possible solutions and perform design trade-off analyses. They proceed to then define a system solution, develop a project plan, and share a presentation of their system design and plan at a design review. Students complete their detailed design and then build a working prototype to verify their solution. “We started this entire project from scratch. It was all new and we had to utilize the skills that we didn’t really have to work out before, but being in this particular project forced us to expand on what we already knew. This project is our baby in a way (no pun intended), having all of our ideas come together and overall it being a success,” said Gabrielle Topalian, discussing their Babyminder System.

The teams present, and are judged on their prototype solutions at Engineering Design Day. Finally, students document their design process and solution in a final report, which also includes a summary of lessons learned and possible future enhancements – some of which become future Senior Design projects themselves. “I’m very impressed with all the projects I saw today, impressed by the diversity, the education level of design that the students are already at, and how polished everyone was when presenting. They all did an excellent job,” said Toby Meadows, one of the judges for Design Day.

The results from the competition for the final projects from ECE 485 are:

Industry Solutions:

• 1st: Automated EMC Calibration Device
• 2nd: Project Store Hound

Environmental Tech:

• 1st: High Precision Field Locations for Geological Explorations
• 2nd: Smart Koozie

Smart Living/Wellness

• 1st: Babyminder System for Child Heatstroke
• 2nd: Recovery as a Service

The results for the in-progress projects that were awarded from ECE 484 are:

Section 001:

• 1st: Robotic Magnetic Flux Mapper
• 2nd: FREEDM Power Grid Game
• 3rd: Framatome Programmable Limit Switch

Section 002:

• 1st: Robotic Stair Climbing Universal Cleaning Companion
• 2nd: Cancer Mutation Emulator
• 3rd: Don’t Ovary-Act