Thanksgiving break is rapidly approaching next week and the CHAMPS are eager to complete a few more tasks based on the Prototype Inspection Day (PID) feedback before the holidays. The team delivered an overall successful presentation explaining their progress on the machine-learning prototype on Tuesday, November 14. However, the attending faculty and distinguished guests provided some criticism and suggestions for future implementation. The CHAMPS specifically presented to Dr. Rong Zhang, Dr. Edward Latorre, Naqash Gerard, Gadhaun Aslam, Dr. Catia Silva, and Manuel Ernesto Cortés.

A shared concern among the audience included the CHAMPS’ lack of understanding of the Commander data. The team is awaiting the Commander data dictionary in the upcoming weeks and discussed the issue with Verifone liaison engineers the following morning in a meeting with additional Verifone engineers. Other faculty members addressed the potential downfall of the team employing an autoencoder for anomaly detection and instead recommended clustering. The CHAMPS will research and discuss the use of clustering with Coach Zhang and the Verifone liaisons next week. Nevertheless, the team may continue to work with an autoencoder if authorized. In the meantime, the team will also continue to improve the model through research and progress on the project documentation.