Fall 2018 Schedule (academic
calendar)
Class Meet Time &
Location: Monday 11:00AM -
01:30PM SH 374
Office Hours:
Thursday 2:00 - 4:00 pm, Room: NAC 8/211
- 08/27/2018, First day of class meet. Course
Introduction and
Updated Project Topic List (with 12 topics)
(Prof. Z. Zhu and Prof Xiao). (Assignment 0 - Resumes with Project
Interests. Please send your resume in PDF via email to
capstone.zhu.ccny@gmail.com. Due Sept 03, 2018
before midnight).
- 09/05/2018 (Wednesday). Past Project
Presentations/Demos (ASSIST, VR4ASD, Panoramik -
Zhu) and devices and ideas for this year's projects (Nuravine
-ALex Babich; Tango, Body Cam and Oculus Rift - Greg
Olmschenk/Vishnu Nair; Pre-Journey App and Holelens - Hao
Tang; ARKit - Lidong Chen; ARCore - YufuQu; Smart
Cane - Xiao)
- 09/17/2018. Human
and Machine Vision by Prof. Zhu; Discussions on Capstone Team Forming.
- 09/24/2018. Talking with Staff /
Users at Goodwill NY/NJ on ASD (Celina Cavalluzzi,
Yanique Green 11:15 am-12:15pm) and
Lighthouse Guild on BVI (Dr. William Seiple, 12:30
pm - 1:30 pm) ; Discussions
on Capstone Team Forming.
- 10/01/2018. Pre-Proposal will be a TEAM
PROPOSAL with team members and a quad chart (template). Each team presents 5-10 minutes,
and the final quad chart is due Oct 08
midnight . The pre-proposal will follow
the CREATE guidelines, which should include a specific
project title and be a brief discussion of the project
under the following headings: Background (the needs and
state-of-the-art, the context of the problem to be
solved), Problem (what you will do), Rationale (why this
approach, how it is related to employment) and Design
(how you are going to do it). Detailed
Instructions for the CREATE Proposal can be found here.
For those
teams who want to go CREATE please also add a slide
for itemized budget estimation (under $1000), and in
the quad chart, please justify for employment of
people with disabilities.
- 10/08/2018. No class. You
may find the summary
of the feedback for your quad chart presentation.
Please use them to revised your quad chart and send it to
me in PPTX format, by Oct 8. Here is the grading
so far.
- 10/15/2018. Entrepreneurship Opportunities (Zahn Center Competition by Devin
Voorsanger, Co-Interim Executive Director and
Managing Director, Technology Entrepreneurship, Zahn
Innovation Center - City College of New York and NSF
I-Corps by Arber Ruci,
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NYCRIN, CUNY Central Office
of Research, 15 minutes each), and Team Proposal
initial presentations (12
teams including all CS/CpE/EE students, 5+2 minutes each
team; The end of October should be the deadline for
CREATE team proposal with 3-5 pages including a budget),
Brainstorming of Your Projects (30 minutes). Here
is the grading
so far.
- 10/22/2018. LECTURE ON Robotics:Sensor, Control and
Locomotion - Introduction
(Xiao); Robotics:Sensor, Control and Locomotion - Key
techniques (Xiao) - Assignment
1 (Due Nov 05) Prof Zhu
will announce the four CREATE Teams during the break.
Once a clearly-defined project has been decided on and
approved by both the school and the member agency, each
student team must draft a project proposal and submit it
to NYSID no later than November 2, 2018. The
proposal should include a specific project title and a
brief discussion of the project including the following
headings: Background, Statement of the Problem, Rationale,
and Design. NYSID will review the draft and based on
NYSID's feedback, the school will make any necessary
changes or clarifications and will submit a final proposal
to NYSID by the end of the fall semester. Each team will
also submit a cost estimate to produce their project along
with their proposal. NYSID will provide a pre-paid debit
card to the team for that amount. If a team exceeds their
estimate, they may request a second pre-paid card. The
maximum amount NYSID will provide per project is $1,000.
- 10/29/2018. Super-Team Presentations (The Four CREATE super-teams (25
minutes each), the Music team (10 minutes) and
the Nuravine team (10 minutes) present details of
the proposed work) The CREATE proposals (in docx
format) are due by Oct 30, 2018 to
capstone.zhu.ccny@gmail.com. Here is
the grading
so far.
- 11/05/2018. Vision: Image Enhancement and Feature
Detection (Slides
| Lecture
Notes by Zhu) - Assignment
2 (Due Nov 19)
- 11/12/2018. Student Reading Presentations (Teams 1-12) (Each student team shall present
your understanding
on key technical tools (SDKs, platforms, existing
code etc) you need to use; 5+3 minutes each)
- 11/19/2018. Vision:
Stereo Vision and Visual Motion (Slides
| Lecture Notes on Stereo
and Motion
by Zhu) - Assignment
3 (Due Dec 03)
- 11/26/2018. Class Discussions on Team Projects,
Assignments, and Proposal Presentations. Here is the grading
so far.
- 12/03/2018 and 12/10/2018. Student Team Proposal
Final Presentations. All
need to come in both class meets (we will take class
attendance). External guests may be invited to
provide feedback to your proposals.
- 12/21/2018. Final
Grading for Fall 2019. The
grades will be submitted on Dec 25, 2018.
Capstone Wiki Pages (Internal
Use Only)
Background
Leveraging
Prof.
Zhigang Zhu's expertise in human-computer interaction
and computer vision, Prof.
John
(Jizhong)
Xiao's expertise in robotic navigation, we have
expanded their research focus to developing advanced human
centric assistive systems to help people in need, e.g.
visually impaired people, to achieve
independent and quality life in familiar or unfamiliar
environments. We have collaborations with the Computer Center for
Visually Impaired People (CCVIP) at CUNY
Baruch College, the NYS Commission for the Blind
(NYSCB), New York Institute of Special
Education and
most recently NYSID and Goodwill NY/NJ
via the CREATE
program. Their feedback could help us
to develop
compact, lightweight, inexpensive devices or services to
improve the quality of life of people, particular those in
need .
Description
We have developed a
cross-department joint senior design course for
undergraduate seniors in CS, CpE and EE in developing
automated and assistive technologies for smart living of
all. These include: multimodal, passive and
unobtrusive techniques for helping visually impaired people
to achieve independent travel in unfamiliar environments;
smart house systems and mobile apps for improving the
quality of life of elderly and people in need (such as with
Autism Spectrum Disorders - ASDs); and sensing technologies
for health monitoring and rehabilitation .We have obtained
multiple NSF, NYSID and VentureWell awards to carry out
basic research and to run the
cross-department joint senior design program for CS/CpE/EE
seniors. The joint
senior design program builds on our existing capstone
design course structure in CS and EE departments, but with
a new concentration on assistive
technology for people in need.
In each year, the joint
senior design course is a mandated two semester sequence
for senior students in both CS and EE departments. In
the first semester we will offer materials on basic
technologies in sensors, actuators, robotic navigation,
vision algorithms, and assistive technologies by the
instructors. The general materials will introduce
important aspects of a business plan such as project
management, intellectual property (IP), entrepreneurship.
The lecture series on entrepreneurship at GSoE will be
utilized where professionals are invited to share their
real world experiences.
As the
second part of the first semester, students will read
technical papers and present to the class. Under the
guidance of the instructors, the undergrad seniors will form
teams to survey the state-of-the-art technologies in several
challenges areas (i.e., multimodal sensing approaches,
assistive technologies, and mobile apps), perform
patent searches, conduct marketing analyses, and write
project proposals which shall include design ideas, a
reasonable budget, a management plan with milestones, and a
business plan. CS/CpE/EE students are encouraged to form
multidisciplinary teams and work collaboratively to
contribute their different expertise in the projects. The
faculty mentors will review the
proposals and give senior design students feedback to refine
their projects
In the second semester,
the student teams are expected to implement design ideas,
prototype, test, and evaluate different designs. Students will also have the opportunities to
perform usability study on vision impaired users in
collaboration with NYSCB therefore better understanding
their needs to improve the designs and to create more
appropriate business plans. The prominent teams with
innovative ideas/technology and good business plans will
be recommended to compete for (1) Zahn Center
Competitions, (2) NYSID CREATE Awards
and (3) VentureWell
E-TEAM Competition. The CREATE
Awards will provide up to $1000 during the senior design
period, and the winning teams in Zahn and E-Team will be
supported to continue the effort in summer and beyond.
Reading
Materials
Other
Useful Links
Professor Zhigang Zhu's Visual
Computing Laboratory
Professor John (Jizhong) Xiao's Robotics Laboratory
NYSID
and CREATE
Program
Goodwill
NY/NJ
Copyright @
Zhigang Zhu,
2018-2019