Summer 2002
|
Summer 2002 |
|
You didn't have to be an Olympic-caliber swimmer to know that
three Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology electrical engineering students were
onto something big. A Nobel Prize-winning scientist knew it. So, too, did
engineering professors and students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
California Institute of Technology and Case Western Reserve University. They all huddled around Richard Barton, Keith Huster and Brent
Weigel as they demonstrated a prototype of their digital swimming lap counting
and timing device at a National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators
Alliance-sponsored exhibit this spring at the Smithsonian Institute's Lemelson
Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of
American History in Washington, D.C. The device was also the object of much attention at the American
Society for Engineering Education's Frontiers in Education national conference
last fall at Reno, Nevada. Nearby was a lightweight, battery- heated jacket with
a temperature control unit, designed by students at the University of
Pittsburgh; a credit card-size, automatic epinephrine injecting system for
people threatened by allergies from bee stings, from the University of Virginia;
and a flexible bolt that allows builders to easily connect two parts that are
out of alignment, from California Polytechnic- an Luis Obispo. But Rose-Hulman's
exhibit was the highlight of both shows. "We had Smithsonian visitors from all over the world, high
school swimmers and parents fascinated by our design and what the device can do.
A patent attorney quizzed us about complicated technical matters," Weigel said.
"The response was encouraging. We knew we had a marketable product." Huster
added, "The display in Reno was a real morale boost and gave us some new ideas.
We then refined our original concepts. The Smithsonian exhibit showed us that we
really were onto something big. It gave us an extra boost to finish the job."
The Precision Swim Trainer is an underwater device (24 inches
tall by-28 inches wide-by-1/2 inch thick) that can be easily placed at the end
of a swimming pool lane (weighing only 15 pounds). Touch sensors throughout the
padded device record valuable training information for a swimmer, allowing the
athlete to focus on perfecting his or her strokes, not counting laps. While recording total number of laps (in a green-illuminated
display on top), the device can also report two types of information (in the red
numbers across the bottom): Lap interval time (down to a hundredth of a second)
or total swimming time (minutes and seconds). A microprocessor can record a
swimmer's daily training regime for downloading on a personal computer. This
would allow the athlete and coach to study swimming tendencies between
practices. "This device gives everyday swimmers an opportunity to benefit
from an Olympic-type training regime," said Barton, a former high school and
college swimmer. "I would have loved to have had this training partner, because
I kept forgetting what lap I was swimming. Coaches will no longer have to spend
time using stopwatches to keep track of lap times. They can utilize their
coaching skills to improve the swimmers' techniques, shaving valuable seconds
off a race. Coaches fall in love with the device." That's why the Rose-Hulman students have formed a limited
liability corporation (Sports Dynamics), which will pursue manufacturing design
and marketing research studies this summer, and have started discussions to find
potential venture capital. This comes as Barton begins work at the U.S. Air
Force's Research and Development Office; Huster is employed at Hill-Rom; and
Weigel waits to begin graduate school at Rose-Hulman. The secret to the swim training device is new display
technology, codeveloped by the students and local entrepreneur Greg Stump, that
allows for large-scale, efficient and inexpensive displays — to meet any design
specification. It utilizes high-brightness LEDs which provide the display with a
long life cycle, making the device a perfect match for other uses (billboards,
road construction signs and traffic information signs). "There's endless potential with this technology. Hopefully, it
will be developed and marketed, but it will depend on what we learn and get
accomplished this summer," Weigel said. "It has gone much further than a simple
senior design project." Indeed, the lap-counting device was originally a science fair
project that earned Barton a first-place award in the Duracell Invention
Challenge (sponsored by the National Science Teachers Association) and induction
into the National Gallery of America's Young Innovators, a part of the Inventors
Hall of Fame. "Whenever I have wanted to stop I've been encouraged to take the
concept one step further," Barton said. "Now, through lots of hard work by Brent
and Keith, it may become a product that we'll reap benefits from in the future." Tomorrow's bright idea can be yesterday's news. This was one of the lessons that four Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology electrical engineering students learned while striving to develop
cutting edge technology to possibly revolutionize the digital photography
industry. The idea: Utilizing state of the art Bluetooth technology to
create a wireless system that could transmit images from a digital camera to a
personal computer. The system would expand the memory capabilities of digital
cameras and make digital technology more desirable to amateur and professional
photographers. The problem: Expanded memory cards were introduced this spring
to digital cameras, making the team's system obsolete. "We had a great idea," says Joseph Baumgarte, the project's lead
software manager. "However, we weren't alone, and we didn't have enough time to
act on our plans before companies had a marketable product on the market,
severely damaging our efforts." That opinion was shared by team members Chad
Alojipan, Elizabeth Huttsell and Quentin Kramer. "We learned that technological advances proceed at
light-breaking speed," stated Alojipan, who worked on the Bluetooth technology
part of the project. The wireless image transmission system was one of 19 advanced
entrepreneurial projects funded in 2000 by the National Collegiate Inventors and
Innovators Alliance. The team received $3,000 to help develop its idea, which
was featured at this year's NCIIA education conference in Washington, D.C., and
the American Society of Engineering Education's Frontiers In Education
conference. "The feedback from companies on our product concept was
immeasurable," said Huttsell, the project leader. "The FIE experience was one of
the most enjoyable and educational of my years at Rose-Hulman." The project consisted of two transceivers. One module would
attach to a digital camera using the Compact Flash standard memory card slot and
be able to compress and transmit the images. Through Bluetooth technology, the
image data would be sent from the digital camera device to the computer module.
The computer module will have the ability to seek out and find digital camera
modules within range. At the computer module, the image data will be
decompressed and saved to a specified directory. This application will be
designed for computers running the Windows 98/2000 or higher operating system. During the project's development, the team experienced major
challenges in implementing a UART designed for communication between serial
devices and Compact Flash and PC Card devices. After many different
implementation efforts and communication with the manufacturer, it was
determined that the utilization of this UART made the team’s solution improbable
and therefore was a major design flaw of the system. "We learned that communication is the key to any project,"
stated Kramer, the team's hardware leader. "It didn't take us long to realize
that we needed to talk to the engineers involved in the technology that we were
hoping to utilize in our system. We got the run around and broken promises from
so many salespeople. The next time, we'll go straight to the source." This is just one of the valuable learning experiences of the
NCIIA innovation projects, according to Fred Berry, Rose-Hulman's electrical and
computer engineering department chair. "The students work together in
interdisciplinary groups to work collaboratively to identify real-world
problems, develop practical solutions, and commercialize their innovations. They
were really turned on about their futures and got much more out of it than what
NCIIA put in," Berry said. Finally, the team created a paper design of a new solution for
the system consisting of the Intel StrongARM Processor as the system's
processing core. Another group of electrical engineering seniors is expected to
pick up the project next year. Meanwhile, the four Rose-Hulman students have
advanced to pursue their postgraduate careers. Alojipan and Kramer are planning
to attend graduate school; Baumgarte is now working at Delphi Electronics in
Kokomo; and Huttsell has started work at Intel in Portland, Ore. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance hopes
to advance the teaching of invention and innovation in American higher
education. It is an initiative of the Lemelson Foundation, a private
philanthropic organization founded by inventor Jerome Lemelson (1923-97), who
held more than 500 patents covering a wide range of technologies, including
machine-vision systems and flexible manufacturing systems. The NCIIA provides grant support to colleges around the country
for the creation of student invention teams (called "E-Teams" for excellence and
entrepreneurship), courses, projects, networking opportunities and resources for
faculty and student innovators. Four senior electrical and computer engineering
projects from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology received NCIIA support during
the past two years, and applications for 12 projects have been filed for the
2002-03 school year, according to ECE Department Chair Fred Berry. "These students are transforming the future with their
innovations," says Phil Weilerstein, executive director of the NCIIA. "The act
of turning a creative idea into an innovative and viable product - while still
in school - represents a new movement in education that gives students the
opportunity to build the skills they need to be successful in a dynamic,
collaborative workplace."
|
