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Computer programs have been developed to create a
warehouse inventory tracking system, a security tool interface, and
sales tracking and testing tools by senior Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology computer science and software engineering students.
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| Inventory
Helper: Joshua Brown shows off the handheld device that is used
to track warehouse inventory. Brown joined five students in
developing the device that will interact with the current
desktop client via a wireless network. |
Nine projects were featured in this year’s Computer
Science & Software Engineering Senior Project Expo on April 5.
One program will enable Michigan Extruded Aluminum
(Jackson, Mich.) to better manage its sales representatives, assigned to
27 regions, through icons on a map of the United States and Canada that
show up on a computer screen. The program will help management make sure
the company doesn’t hire two salespersons for any region or have two
salespersons working in overlapping regions.
“This was a great real-world experience,” stated team
leader Kyle Beasley of Reelsville, Ind. He was assisted by Paul Gagnon
of Decatur, Ill.; Jesse Pate of Cadiz, Ky., and Nathan Roe of Forsyth,
Ill. “We never met our company contact in person. We communicated
through conference calls and email messages -- just like we’re going to
encounter in the business world. We had to do some things on our own and
wait for feedback from our company contact. We learned to take advantage
of every minute of our contact’s attention.”
A prototype mobile warehouse inventory tracking software
program has been developed for Manhatten Associates (Carmel, Ind.). The
project will be used on a variety of handheld reading devices, and it
will interact with the current desktop client via a wireless network. It
provides greater flexibility in warehouse management for customers.
Large-scale equipment suppliers, like Wal-Mart, have shown interest in
the program.
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| Keeping Track Of Business: Kyle Beasley
(left) and Nathan Roe display a computer program that has been
developed to help a company manage its sales staff. |
The student development team was led by Joshua Cottrill
of South Bend, Ind., and included Benjamin Baker of Alamogordo, N.M.;
Joshua Brown of Kokomo, Ind.; Richard Solotkie of Deerfield, Ill.; and
Auston Zahrt of South Bend.
Other projects completed this year included:
Helping Calibrate Records: Helping calibrate
records of equipment used to manufacture a product was the focus of a
project for Eli Lilly and Company (Indianapolis). A database has been
developed to let employees see when equipment was last calibrated, which
is a key element to the production of pharmaceutical products. The
development team was led by Matthew Bender of Boonville, Ind., and
included Aaron Dubin of Farmington, Mich.; Anna Kaplunov of Morton
Grove, Ill.; Amber Pennington of St. Louis; and Victoria Taylor of
Greenwood, Ind.
New Security Tool: Gracar Corporation
(Indianapolis) desired development of a security tool interface for
Solaris systems. The output is presented in a readable format. Zachary
Braun of San Antonio, Texas, was the team lead. Other members were
Robert Iles of Logansport, Ind.; Jason Osborn of Houston; and Matthew
Stachowski of Orland Park, Ill.
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| Interactive Exhibit: Timothy Cline (left)
and Charles Penn are featured alongside the computerized piece
of artwork that uses motion and sound detectors to interact with
people passing by the exhibit. |
Interactive Art Piece: A computerized piece of
artwork is in the development stage that will become part of
Rose-Hulman’s first floor lobby in Olin Hall. It will feature three
monitors, which display three different views in a three-dimensional
virtual “house.” An animated character will interact with passersby,
waving its’ right arm when detecting a sound or its’ left arm when
detecting motion in the room. Leading the team was Charles Penn of
Needham, Ind. He was assisted by Thomas Aigner of Columbus, Ind.;
Timothy Cline of Greenfield, Ind.; Jason Hochstedler of Topeka, Ind.;
Michael Lehenbauer of Indianapolis; and Dan Mistele of Honolulu, Hawaii.
Real-Time Processor Safe Guard: A project was
developed for MacAulay Brown (San Antonio, Texas) to monitor the
execution state of the processor for a given program in real-time. This
is accomplished through a special driver written to run monitoring code
after every instruction the target program executes – saving the
monitored data through a combination of writing to hard drive and output
to another computer through a serial cable. Pete Fine of Glenview, Ill.,
led this team. Other members were Daniel Dominik of Homewood, Ill.;
Joshua Lieberman of Indianapolis; Ross Miller of Clifton, Va.; Jordan
Thayer of Ferdinand, Ind.; and David Yip of Littleton, Colo.
Testing Repository: Beckman Coulter Inc.
(Indianapolis) requested a database system to create, store and operate
software and hardware testing plans. The system was designed to be
accessed through a web site using C#.NET and ASP.NET. In addition to
storing the test plans, the system tracks the revision history of test
plans, the creators/editors of each test plan, the results and who
approved the plan. The team was led by Gregory Wilke of Parkers Prairie,
Minn., and included Joshua Bowman of Avon, Ind.; Patrick Hodges of
Boonville, Ind.; David Keller of Orangevale, Calif.; and Branden Neufeld
of Wichita, Kan.
Peer Review Systems: Two programs were developed
for Terre Haute’s Stage Logic that provides a peer review system for
software developers. The first is a plugin for Trac, a configuration
management system that interfaces with the Subversion versioning system.
The students’ plugin eliminates the need for time consuming code review
meetings by giving developers the ability to review code in a
user-friendly, web-based environment on their own time. The goal of the
second program is to make the peer review process easier to execute so
more people will practice it, which improves higher quality. The first
team was led by Gabriel Golcher of Miami, Fla., and included Brandon
Cannaday of Monterey, Calif.; Michael Kuehl of New York City; Anthony
Panozzo of Lowell, Ind.; and Adam Westhusing of Louisville. Brian Caruso
of Edmonds, Wash., led the second team. Other members were Andrew Lee of
Eagan, Minn.; Jason McFarland of Danville, Ind.; and Nicholas Philbrook
of Boise, Idaho.
The Department of Computer Science and Software
Engineering’s senior design program was organized this year by
professors Mark Ardis and Steve Chenoweth. |
