Student Design Engineers at Work
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Kenya Eco-Village | Mashavu | ASV | WishVast | Wave Tank | Pavement Tester | Neutron Density | EDSGN 497EF | Past Projects
Our current ventures encompass a variety of fields of engineering and vary in scope. Many of our current projects focus on design and implentation of sustainable solutions that are profitable for clients and have a positive social and environmental impact around the world. Some of our current initiatives are focused in countries such as Kenya and Tanzania.
The transition from residential care to independent living has been a significant challenge for former street‐dwelling youth in Kenya. This collaborative initiative among Pennsylvania State University (PSU), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Juja, Kenya and the Children and Youth Empowerment Centre, (CYEC), Nyeri, Kenya, will establish a system of eco‐villages in Kenya to facilitate the successful exit of former street‐dwelling children and youth from rehabilitation centers. The idea is to assist youth graduating from the CYEC (and other centers) to become independent and self‐reliant even when immediate employment is not available. This initiative will address a significant social and economic challenge in Kenya and other parts of the developing world: the social and economic reintegration of street‐dwelling children and youth. The proposed initiative will have four key and unique foci:
Eco-Village EDSGN 497C Playlist
Videos created by students in the EDSGN 497C Design for Developing Communities Class. The students briefly explain their designs and three things they learned that impacted their design.
There is one doctor for every 50,000 people in East Africa compared to one doctor for every 390 people in the United States. It costs a significant amount of time and money to consult a doctor in East Africa, and whether to even consult a doctor is a critical decision. U.S. doctors are interested in performing outreach but cannot make commitments to long-term international assignments. Mashavu enables medical professionals around the world to connect with patients in the developing world using modern technology and communications infrastructure. Trained operators at Mashavu stations in developing communities collect essential medical information including weight, body temperature, lung capacity, blood pressure, photographs, stethoscope rhythms, and basic hygiene and nutrition information for each patient on a regular basis. Web servers aggregate this information from various Mashavu stations over a cell-phone link and provide it on a web-based portal. Medical professionals can view the patient’s information and respond to the patient and the nearest doctor(s) with their recommendations. Validation efforts prove that numerous entities are willing to purchase Mashavu stations. They can charge customers a small fee, thereby making Mashavu economically sustainable and creating an additional revenue stream.
Mashavu EDSGN 497C Playlist
Videos created by students in the EDSGN 497C Design for Developing Communities Class. The students briefly explain their designs and three things they learned that impacted their design.
The Mashavu team was invited to participate in the Idea-to-Product Competition for Social Entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech University in April 2008 and the ASME Innovation Showcase in Boston in October 2008. The team attended an Advanced Invention to Venture Workshop (AI2V) at the University of Illinois in September 2008 and was invited to present their experiences at the Social Capital (SoCap) conference in San Francisco in October 2008. Related publications to this project include:
Mehta, K., Laliberte, N., Fleishman, A., De Reus, L., Dowler, L., "Multidisciplinary Social Entrepreneurship Education Model: If Capitalism, Socialism and Feminism in concert strive, will Social Entrepreneurship thrive?", NCIIA Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2009 (Accepted pending minor revisions)
Delcore, H., Mehta, K., Spears, L., "Using Social Science to Unlock the Pan-Human Capacity for Innovation", NCIIA Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2009 (Accepted pending minor revisions)
Mashavu Validation Team, “Validation process for a technology based social entrepreneurial venture in Tanzania”, International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Forthcoming.
Click here to access the website dedicated to the student initiative of this project.
The objective of the Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) is to fabricate a light weight water vessel capable of navigating, avoiding obstacles, and performing other mission-critical tasks without any human interaction. The mission tasks include passing through a starting gate, traversing through six pairs of buoys, identifying and neautralizing hostile targets, docking, deploying a man-recovery system, undocking, and returning. Successfully performing these tasks requires expertise from multiple fields such as sensor integration, control system design, hull design, and project management. Our ASV will be submitted to the ASV Competition, which will be held in August 2009. More information can be found at the website of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).
A multi-disciplinary team at Penn State recently employed social network analysis to examine social and economic network knowledge systems of rural women agro-entrepreneurs in Tanzania and the role cellphones play within these networks. One objective was to develop cellphone-based applications to link small-scale farmers and other entrepreneurs with markets and enable them to utilize, strengthen and expand their networks. The study illustrated practical connections between social networks and cell phones in creating sustainable cooperative business models, providing market information and identifying entrepreneurial champions in developing communities. The study revealed that business relationships were based very strongly on trust and respect. A symbiotic relationship exists between social and economic capitals. Social capital arises from the existence of trust in a society which, in turn, encourages cooperation in the generation of economic capital. In developing countries, most successful groups are based on trust and business cooperatives often fail due to mistrust and lack of transparency. Trust also plays a critical role in the diffusion of innovation because people prefer receiving information from trusted sources.
Program objectives:
Wishvast EDSGN 497C Playlist
Videos created by students in the EDSGN 497C Design for Developing Communities Class. The students briefly explain their designs and three things they learned that impacted their design.
Related publications to this project include:
Mehta, K. Semali, L., Maretzki, A., Findeis, J., Kuldau, G., Willyerd, K., "Cellphones and Social Networks: Defining new opportunities and discovering champions for entrepreneurial ventures in developing communities", NCIIA Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2009 (Accepted pending minor revisions)
Delcore, H., Mehta, K., Spears, L., "Using Social Science to Unlock the Pan-Human Capacity for Innovation", NCIIA Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2009 (Accepted pending minor revisions)
Mehta, K., Bilen, S., Semali, L., Maretzki, A., “Systems Thinking Case Study: WishVast Trust Building Tool”, Systems Engineering Division, ASEE Annual Conference, 2009. (In preparation: Abstract submitted)
Wave tanks are used for research at Penn State as part of a comprehensive study of wave motion and ocean wave propagation. Instantaneous and simultaneous water level measurement at multiple locations is a key part of the experimental setup. Coincident measurements at rates of 500-1000 per second for several minutes are required. High speed water level sensors were developed providing the level sensing information as a frequency signal proportional to water level. A “bank” of high speed frequency counters is required to record the water levels. ECS developed this recording equipment and signal processing software for these level sensors. Signals needed to be processed from 20 of water level sensors for “burst” intervals of several minutes and record the results to computer disk. Synchronization of data collection across sensors was critical. The use of commercial frequency counters option was expensive and measurement synchronization was problematic.
The requirement for high speed and strict concurrency of measurement renders conventional DAQ computer boards and commercial frequency counters impractical as a solution to this problem. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA’s) are an excellent solution for this application, however conventional FPGA implementations require high engineering labor costs. ECS applied the new technology from National Instrument’s to solve this application problem. The new alternative is an FPGA implementation which programs in the programming language called LabVIEW and offers a development path which requires much less engineering time. The system is effectively 20 concurrently operating high measurement rate, high resolution frequency counters which are tightly synchronized. These counters are all implemented in one FPGA subsystem which transmits all the results to a host program which post processes the data and stores final results to disk. All FPGA and host computer processes execute concurrently. Preliminary proof of concept testing was very successful in the ECS laboratory using existing in-house National Instruments FPGA hardware and software in 2007. ECS delivered the completed system in early 2008 and successful system qualification was largely completed by Fall 2008.
Click here for a diagram of the SST software system.
The Superpave shear tester (SST) is a closed-loop servo-hydraulic dual actuator system which was procured, in mid 1990's, by the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute Northeast Superpave Center (later known as Northeast Center of Excellence for Pavement Technology) through a pooled fund program created by Federal Highway Administration to equip the five established Superpave Centers around the country with Superpave equipment. The equipment was manufactured by Interlaken Technology Corp. of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. This system became out-of-date and required some hardware upgrades and a total software upgrade. The upgrade process centered on National Instrument’s LabVIEW and National Instrument’s hardware. The long term objective is to complete the hardware and software upgrades bringing the system back to the original functionality using the new hardware components and LabVIEW based software.
Phase I of the project focused on completing the fundamental interfacing between transducers and LabVIEW. Start with measurement transducers and then interface hydraulic controls. This included new hardware assembly, transducer connections, hardware debugging, verification of LabVIEW software compatibility, and creation of basic LabVIEW software drivers for each transducer element.
Phase II was completion of the all the basic mid-level and high level software necessary to restore the entire system to a functional status.
Bothe phases were conducted by Penn State College of Engineering’s Electronic and Computer Services (ECS) Design Group. Phase II was completed for the Penn State’s Pennsylvania Transportation Institute in 2008.
Click here to see a diagram of the system hardware.
The Nuclear Reactor has had a neutron density measurement system in operation for years. The old DOS based system was updated by ECS. The new system consists of a Windows XP based Operating System using LabVIEW application environment for interface and system control. The basic functions and hardware concepts for the new system are similar to the old system; however, most of the hardware and software systems have been updated. This new system also incorporates minor program and operational enhancements while improving the system’s overall operating efficiency.
The basic system hardware components include the following: a computer, neutron counting preamplifiers, DAQ card, and stepper motor with controller, sample position optical sensors, and barcode reader.
The entire process is called the Neutronics Control Inspection test. Neutron transmittance inspection of the parts is done in accordance with the procedures detailed in document PSU-EPI-001: Rev. 0.0. Parts are shipped to PSU with an expected minimum 10B areal density in units of mg/cm2.
The inspection is performed to determine the actual areal density of 10B using neutron transmittance measurements. Variations in the inspected parts’ physical parameters, such as thickness, surface quality, or voids, are not normally reported unless they have affected a reported measurement.
A series of ZrB2 reference parts ranging in 10B areal densities through the possible values of the unknowns to be tested are utilized as standards in determining the areal densities of the parts. Calibrations were performed at frequent intervals (typically, once every three hours). Areal densities for each part were determined by using an exponential interpolation between adjacent ZrB2 calibration standard coupons. Transmittance counting data was collected after a part was moved into the neutron test facility. The counting data determines the neutron transmittance for each part and subsequently its 10B content. Transmission data is typically taken with the reactor power at 800 kW. Parts are finally categorized as either PASS or FAIL.
The Sensor and Controller System Integration course in the College of Engineering is a hands-on project-based course that covers the interfacing of a wide array of sensors, actuators, instruments and sub-systems to computers of various form factors to build proof-of-concept systems for innovative products and processes. The course, which is open to all disciplines, has a very entrepreneurial focus and strongly encourages students to engage in an overarching venture that focuses on high-tech high-impact systems to improve the quality of life in developing communities.
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Students Will Ferry and Jeff DiTeodoro attend Texas Instruments TechDay in New Jersey, helping IDS evaluate new technology.
ECS is designing for the future.