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Sensor Systems in the Transportation Industry (Spring 2001) IPRO 353
Title
Sensor Systems in the Transportation Industry (Spring 2001) IPRO 353
Creator
Boitor, Andrei, Lauzze, Kevin, Pendleton, Ryan, Volberding, Beth
Date
2001, 2001-05
Description
The prototypes for a railroad tank car monitoring system have been developed in prior IPRO projects. The prototypes now need to be developed...
Show moreThe prototypes for a railroad tank car monitoring system have been developed in prior IPRO projects. The prototypes now need to be developed into potential product form, beta tested, and evaluated both technically and from a market perspective. A patent application has been outlined. A business plan needs to be written that gathers the information required to decide on a commercial product offering to Union Tank Car as the first customer. A market survey should define the potential market within the railroad industry, the economics of such a business, and its potential in other related market segments, such as trucking. At the end of this Entrepreneurial IPRO, we should have beta tested the potential product. If the results are successful, manufacturers and suppliers should be identified to bring the product to market. A first sale offering should be made to Union Tank Car, assuming beta testing is successful. The possibility to formulate a successful business together with our first customer, Union Tank Car, will be evaluated. The team required to execute the business plan will be identified; and the.potential for financing will also be addressed. This entrepreneurial team would ideally consist of chemistry and chemical engineering students for sensor development work; mechanical and electrical engineering students for product engineering and production setup; business school and law school students to support business plan development, market analysis and patenting for the business.
Sponsorship: Union Tank Car Company, a member of The Marmon Group of companies.
Project Plan for IPRO 353: Sensor Systems in the Transportation Industry for the Spring 2001 semester
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Autonomous Mobile Robot Surveyor (Spring 2003) IPRO 308
Title
Autonomous Mobile Robot Surveyor (Spring 2003) IPRO 308
Creator
Goluch, Diana, Matthews, Stuart, Fleteren, David Van, Bango, Eric, Barth, Doug, Boitor, Andrei, Cardenas, Francisco, Kozmic, Jason, Wolak, Steven, Bijur, Rajat
Date
2003, 2003-05
Description
Technological developments in recent years make it possible to constructsmall autonomous mobile platforms equipped with computing hardware...
Show moreTechnological developments in recent years make it possible to constructsmall autonomous mobile platforms equipped with computing hardware andsensors that can communicate with each other and/or with a centralstation. The uses of such platforms are numerous and range from militaryand security applications to monitoring and inspection. While low leveltasks such as obstacle avoidance should be handled by the mobile robotin order to free the attention of a human supervisor, higher level tasksmay require user intervention based on images and other sensoryinformation which is provided by the platform. The way in which taskscan be specified based on the limited information provided by thesurveyor(s) in a natural way is an interesting problem without a simplesolution. This is mainly due to the fact that 2D images and othersensory information are only partial representations of the real 3Dworld. The goal of the project in this semester is to build one or more smallautonomous mobile robot surveyors that can communicate with a remotecontrol-station. The surveyor will use a single board computer, a smallcamera, several range sensors, servo motors, and will be controlled bywireless communication. These surveyors will be used in future projectsto investigate the human interaction and task specification problems.
Sponsorship: IT Collaboratory for Interprofessinal Studies
Project Plan for IPRO 308: Autonomous Mobile Robot Surveyors for Spring 2003 semester
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