STEM Research Hackathon Highlights

Hi All,

Hope you enjoy this new research experience! Congrats to those teams making major breakthrough today! I believe that more progresses will be coming soon from all the teams. Here are some highlights of our first hackathon:

• Team 8 got the first-time haptic feedback from their Senseg tablet and successfully displayed the US map on the screen! The breakthrough makes the team enter the app-building phase!
• Team 2 collected the first set of images from the "compound eyes" model using cell phone camera, and patched them together using Photoshop. This exercise helps the team to explore the strength and limitation of the current model.
• Team 9 successfully separated the red-color object from its background and displayed it as binary image! They tested the code on the number 3 subway sign and the result was astonishingly perfect!
• Team 3 revealed the story flow of their first app for the autistic children. 
• Team 7 started collecting and processing meaningful EMG data for the pinky through SpikerShield+Arduino+MatLab. The data collection process will continue for the rest of the fingers, and the team will then start the data analysis and classification phase.
• Team 1 demonstrated their drone target-following algorithm. Though they were in the mid of modifying their algorithm, we could almost see that the drone will soon following you everywhere!

Enjoy your long weekend and see you next semester!

Debugging the vision-based drone navigation code.

Why the binary image conversion not working?

Focusing on research.

OpenCV scenarios are so....... hard!

EMG data processing: finding the peak values.

Special lunch time entertainment.

First time having tables for class!

Smile.... STEM class!

STEM Research Hackathon

Hi All,

We are going to have our first whole-day STEM Research Hackathon tomorrow from 9:00 am - 2:45 pm. Within 5 hours and 45 minutes, we are going to work intensively on our STEM projects and make dramatic progress! Before you come to the hackathon tomorrow, every team should set a clear, specific, measurable, and ambitious goal. Send me an email about your goal in writing. We wish that we will have several breakthroughs tomorrow. Pizza and soda will be served for lunch at noon. Near the end of the day (2:00 - 2:45 pm), every team will have a brief demonstration of your achievement of the day. See you tomorrow!

STEM Progress Meeting II

We are going to have our second STEM Progress Meeting next Tuesday (01/09/2016). Please prepare it thoroughly and be ready for any questions. Each team will have 5 ~ 10 minutes to present depends on the size of the team. Everyone in the team should present and participate in Q & A. The outlines of the presentation are listed below.

STEM Team Progress Report Outlines
1. Topic
   a. Research topic
   b. Team member(s)
2. Research problem (if your problem stays the same, just briefly recap in one slide)
   a. Definition & scope
   c. Expected outcomes
3. Method (briefly recap the overall method, but focus on the detailed methods of current sub-problems.)
   a. Methods have used to solve the problem(s)
   b. Evaluation and comparison of different methods
4. Progress
   a. Gantt chart : current status & next steps
   b. Project achievements
   c. Demonstrations
5. Problems & Risks
   a. Technical issue(s)
   b. Resource issues(s): tools, materials, etc. need purchase (vendor, price, and time frame)
   c. Potential show stopper and backup plan
6. References (updated Project Resource page on ....)
   a. Books/magazines
   b. Video tutorials
   c. Websites
   d. Papers from professional journals
   e. Thesis/dissertations

Every team member should have the equal opportunity to present/demo. Group and individual performance will be evaluated by peers and teacher.

Good luck!