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Engineering
undergrads encounter
“real life” problem solving
By
David Salisbury
September 10, 2003
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| Photo
by Neil Brake |
| Bina
Shah and Edwin Vargas testing toy flying saucer |
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“Look!
It has green lights that we can use to track it,” says Bina Shah
excitedly, pointing at the toy flying saucer that Edwin Vargas is
attempting to pilot with a controller attached by a long black cord.
Shah is a senior from
the University of Alabama at Birmingham majoring in computer science.
Originally from Bogota, Colombia, Vargas is a senior at Middle Tennessee
University, where he is a double major in computer science and mathematics.
They are among 11 undergraduate engineering and computer science
majors from schools in the Southeastern United States who spent
10 weeks this summer at Vanderbilt as interns in the Summer Internship
Program in Hybrid and Embedded Software Research, or SIPHER.
“This was my first research
experience, and I didn’t know what to expect,” says Shah. “It’s
turned out to be a lot more fun and a lot more useful than I expected.
You can see possible uses for what we have done.”
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| Photo
by Neil Brake |
| Gabor
Karsai |
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This was the inaugural year
of SIPHER. The internship was organized by the Institute for Software-Integrated
Systems as part of a major five-year research grant from the National
Science Foundation that ISIS received along with partners at UC Berkeley
and the University of Memphis.
The grant involves the development of “hybrid and
embedded systems.” These are the kinds of systems proliferating
madly through modern society that integrate computers with other
devices, such as cell phones, computers that control automobile
engines, “smart” appliances and a variety of new medical instruments.
The purpose of the internship is to expose members of under-represented
minorities like Shah and Vargas to this important new technology.
“Despite the fact that we had a late start in sending
out the announcements for the internship, we received 22 applications
in only two weeks,” says program coordinator Robert P. Boxie, III,
himself a recent Vanderbilt graduate with a double major in chemical
engineering and music. The NSF grant supported seven of the interns
who were selected. The other four were funded through a variety
of other programs.
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| Photo
by Neil Brake |
| Video
tracking system team |
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When the interns arrived
early in June, they were divided into five teams and each was given
a different project. Shah and Vargas teamed up with Trione Vincent,
right, a double major in computer science and computer engineering
at Fisk University whose home is New Orleans. The three got the
assignment of developing a video system that can track moving objects:
first a slow-moving toy blimp made of aluminized mylar and second
a fast-moving flying saucer. Graduate student Tivadar Szemethy is
on the left.
The other four teams were assigned similar projects:
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Daniel
Balasubramanian, Rachel Dennison and David Garcia, sitting left
to right, were tasked with programming Lego Mindstorm robots
to travel from a known position to a known destination while
avoiding objects placed in its path. Once they mastered this,
they were given the additional task of programming the robot
to find a second “lost” robot.Graduate student advisor Jyoti
Gandhe is at the far left. |
Photo
by Neil Brake |
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John
Kilby took on the challenge of automating the old saying, “Teaching
is the best way to learn:” His challenge was to develop “teachable
agents:” computer routines designed to act like students which
actual students then must instruct on a given subject so that
the agents can pass a test. |
Photo
by Neil Brake |
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Shantel
Higgins, lower left, and Efosa Ojomo, upper right, worked together
eamed up to develop a “smart structure” – a beam equipped with
sensors and actuators designed to keep it from vibrating. Graduate
student Tao Tao is advising them. |
Photo
by Neil Brake |
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Nickolia
Coombs, left and Michael Rivera-Jackson were given a small parallax
robot. First they programmed it to detect upcoming collisions
and avoid them. Second, they built a complicated maze out of
cardboard and programmed the robot to find its way through the
maze and memorize. Finally, they reprogrammed the robot to find
a nearby light source. |
Photo
by Neil Brake |
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Each of the teams was
assigned a graduate student advisor. Tivadar Szemethy worked with
Shah, Vargas and Vincent. “It’s very interesting to see how quickly
the students began applying theory to real life problems,” says
the Hungarian grad student. “The classroom problems that they are
used to always have one right solution. But that isn’t the case
in real life. So they had to come to terms with the fact that there
isn’t one right solution, but a number of solutions, each with different
pros and cons.”
Szemethy’s observation
is echoed by Gabor Karsai, the associate professor of electrical
engineering and computer science who directs the internship, with
the aid of Janos Sztipanovits, E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor
of Engineering and director ISIS, Ken Frampton, assistant professor
of mechanical engineering, and Gautam Biswas, associate professor
of electrical engineering and computer science.
“I have been impressed
by the quality of the students that we got and it’s a very nice
feeling to see them progress as far as they have,” Karsai says.
In addition to all the
engineering the students have done, the program also was filled
with social activities for the group. Dinners, field trips, concerts,
canoeing and white-water rafting outings were also part of the program.
These activities allowed the students to get acquainted.
“We’re a really diverse
group. We have people from Nigeria, India, Colombia, Hungary and
Puerto Rico,” Vincent says proudly. “We’ve learned a whole lot about
each other’s cultures.”
The ISIS research grant
runs for five years, so the SIPHER program will have funding for
the next four summers.
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VU -
Institute
for Software Integrated Systems
Center
for Hybrid and Embedded Systems
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