The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is looking for motivated computer science students to work with fourth-year engineering students on their year-long Multidisciplinary Capstone Design Project. Please see the project descriptions below.
Each student group will consist of 1-2 CS students and 2-3 engineering students, and work under the supervision of an engineering faculty member. This is a great opportunity to work in-depth on a project with a strong and dedicated team.
Please note that we are looking for a full-year commitment; you will earn 1.0 FCEs upon successful completion of the project in April. Students wishing to just participate for one term may be considered for the Spring 2018 session, but all full-year applications will be given strong preference.
Instructions to Apply:
Send a brief statement of interest, resume and unofficial transcript along with the order of the preference to both:
- David Liu, Lecturer, Computer Science (david@cs.toronto.edu)
- Donna Liu, Multidisciplinary Engineering Design Activities and Operation Assistant (mcp@mie.utoronto.ca)
Application deadline: Friday, September 8, 2017 at 5 p.m.
The acceptance is based on first come and first serve. Please do not hesitate to contact Donna for project-specific questions, or David for any logistics questions.
PROJECTS
1.
Industry Client: Workers Health & Safety Legal Clinic
Project Supervisor: TBD
Computer Science Student needed: 1
Project Title: A Mobile App to Assist Workers in Selecting Personal Protective Equipment to Protect from Workplace Chemical Exposures
Project Description:
Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) contain important information and are an important documents when it comes to the safety of workers. However while MSDSs list the attributes of said substance, selecting the appropriate safety equipment to counter these effects are less transparent.
Our thought is to have a design which works to eliminate this confusion. Instead of having to check if the safety equipment is indeed effective against certain hazards, a master list of substances will be provided with the equipment itself references the MSDs of the substances in question – a reverse MSDS of sorts.
As an introductory guideline, our thoughts is to categorize numerous substances by their physical and chemical properties (hazards) and linking them to the appropriate piece of equipment require in a software design which can be easily update at the user’s discretion.
2.
Industry Client: Defence Research and Development of Canada
Project ID: DRDC
Supervisor: Professor Stark Draper
Computer Science Student needed: 1
Project Title: Improving Current Version of a Browser-Based Tool (Sharik)
Project Description:
Sharik (SHAring Resources, Information, and Knowledge) is a browser-based tool designed to support collaborative sensemaking among all-source intelligence analysts in distributed or co-located intelligence analysis locales. All-source analysts receive different types of information from collators or collection assets, and then integrate the information items to produce intelligence products. Sharik is designed to support analysts and/or collators working together on different aspects of an intelligence problem by providing them with a means by which intelligence production can happen effectively, and in a collaborative fashion. The current version of Sharik needs to be improved based on the results of a usability study. The improvements would involve the re-design and redevelopment of the tool.
Sharik has been built on top of Drupal with various code patches involving Javascript and PHP. Some of the current features of Sharik include: Posting and sharing INT Notes, posting and sharing Propositions, generating interactive graph visualizations, generating Entity Wiki pages, generating INT Brief presentations in a semi-automated way, messaging, commenting, and chatting.
Top computer engineering and computer science students who have web-development and user-centered design skills can provide us with unique and novel ideas to address the existing design and development issues in Sharik.
3.
Industry Client: CPP Investment Board
Project ID: CPPIB
Supervisor: Professor Roy Kwon
Computer Science Student needed: 1
Project Title: Total Portfolio Simulation Tool
The CPP Investment Board manages a large portfolio with a significant proportion of illiquid private assets. In order to maintain a set of desired exposures, the portfolio is managed daily in response to new private deals and market movements by buying and selling liquid public assets, subject to a number of business constraints.
Given the large uncertainty over the timing and size of the private deals, as well as the uncertainty in market conditions, the team would like to design and develop a portfolio simulation tool to explore the dynamics of the evolution of the portfolio through time.
The main preliminary objectives of the project are:
- Prototype a user friendly, flexible, modular, and robust simulation framework.
- Test one or more methodologies to model the uncertainty in the timing and size of private deals, and market conditions.
- Provide a mechanism to report and analyze a set of standard portfolio metrics such as risk, return, and liquidity measures.
The CPP Investment Board is excited to engage the minds of the talented engineers of the University of Toronto. As this is a true practical need for the organization, the team is interested to explore and learn from the innovative approaches the students will take to overcome any or all of the statistical, computational, design, and user experience challenges of the problem.
4.
Project Title: Grid Parking
CSC student needed: 1
Supervisor: Professor Jörg Liebeherr (ECE)
The project below is a engineering students sourced project supported by U of T Engineering Hatchery Entrepreneurship program (https://hatchery.engineering.utoronto.ca/)
Project Description:
City drivers are routinely facing rising challenges in finding parking spaces. A driver spends an average of 15 minutes finding a spot in city of Toronto. There is a need to bridge the gap between the drivers and the available parking spots.
Currently, systems exist to find the parking rates of private or municipal parking spots with little or no knowledge of availability.
The purpose of the capstone project is to bring real time information of parking availability to the driver with the use of synchronized network of sensors and mobile application.
The project deliverables are:
- An integrated sensor based platform on PCB chip secured inside a casing designed with appropriate material selection in Solidworks.
- Arduino connected to sensor with a car detection algorithm.
- Software like excel to log and analyze data from sensor in real time processing environment.
- Database to store parking spots registration information (geo-location, base price, etc.) and server providing a set of API for retrieving real-time availability status of parking lots.
- A mobile app designed and synchronized with the server to show the status of multiple parking spots.
This Capstone project seeks to provide an online platform based on the idea of IOT (Internet of Things) which allows customers to find available parking spots and reserve in real-time. The prototype prepared by students in the capstone would have the potential to be scaled on industrial level. A large scale network of sensors and server(s) would ultimately make it possible for parking lot owners to broadcast 24/7 the status of every parking space whether occupied or idle for every user of the mobile application, therefore, gathering large traffic and generating greater revenues.
The prototype prepared by students in the capstone would have the potential to be scaled on industrial level. A large-scale network of sensors and server(s) would ultimately make it possible for Grid to broadcast 24/7 the availability of parking space.
A CS student in the final year of studies with a passion for working with a promising UofT start-up and possess following qualifications:
- Knowledge of image processing based on computer vision principles
- Proficient in app development for either iOS or android
- Has experience in developing apps
- Has completed CSC258 and CSC209 with at least 75% and any CSC 400 level courses
- Proficiency in data-management is an asset
5.
Industry Advisor: Comtek Advanced Structures
Project ID: Comtek1
Supervisor: Professor Tom Coyle, Subject Matter Expert: Professor Phil Anderson
CSC student needed: 1
NDA: no
Project Title: Automated Packing Strip Dispenser
Project Description:
To produce one of its families of products, Comtek needs to produce packing strips. These are strips of material cut to a specific length and containing holes located at fastener locations. This project aims to develop a machine and the computer systems to automatically produce these strips on-demand. This machine will feed material from a roll while punching the required holes and cutting the strip to length. The machine will be controlled by a computer that reads information from a database located on a server. There are a significant number of product variations (approximately 12,000 different packing strip configurations), so this project will also include development of computer software that translates 2D CAD data into the data required by the machine with a minimum amount of effort.
Deliverables
• Concept sketches or plans prior to preliminary design review and component purchase
• Working prototype system
• Assembly drawing, including BOM for all purchased parts
• Detailed drawings of custom mechanical components
• Wiring diagrams for electronics
• Full codebase for software
6.
Industry Advisor: Comtek Advanced Structures
Project ID: Comtek2
Supervisor: Professor Kamran Behdinan, Subject Matter Expert: Professor Phil Anderson
CSC student needed: 1
NDA: no
Project Title: Automated Resin Infusion System
Project Description:
Resin transfer molding for composites consists of several steps in which pressure or vacuum are applied in various parts of the system and resin flow is turned on and off. This project encompasses the design and construction of a system that obtains a recipe from a server, controls the pressures and flows according to this recipe, monitors pressures and provides a process log that will be stored on the server. Part of this system will operate inside an oven heated to 80*C and it will handle liquid epoxy resin of the same temperature. All mechanical and electrical parts should be of industrial grade (the industry partner will purchase these on behalf of the students).
Deliverables
• Concept sketches or plans prior to preliminary design review and component purchase
• Working prototype system
• Assembly drawing, including BOM for all purchased parts
• Detailed drawings of custom mechanical components
• Wiring diagrams for electronics
• Full codebase for software