– Sebastian

“I believe that having the chance to work with a team in a real-world environment allowed for an increased understanding of what awaits me post graduation. I truly enjoyed working with my team to create a solution to a problem, and I am grateful for the opportunity that IPPD provided.”

– Kate

“Overall, I had a fantastic time with the IPPD program and could really see the passion Dr. Latorre and his team put behind the class. I specifically enjoyed how the class let me experiment with a multi-disciplinary project as a computer science student.”

– Brian

This week the team has given our focus to completing our documentation, fixing the material we are looking to present, and covering the logistics of next week’s FDR event. The team feels confident with the current state of the device, however we did make a few changes that benefit our product greatly. Likely one of the biggest changes that we made this week was with how we were processing data from our AI. Unfortunately, after lots of time spent trying to make it work, the team moved on from the ‘.hef’ file and decided to look elsewhere to get the device operating quicker. We decided to try multiprocessing, and we are very happy with our results! While it was not the acceleration we were hoping for with the AI Hat, this development has helped to smooth our UI! Testing results with this update have also been very good, making this change a great addition to our product! Here are some more things the team has accomplished this week:

• Hardware: Beyond the multiprocessing achievement, the hardware team worked with UI team this week to setup device shutdown.
• AI/ML: The AI team gathered a dataset for one final training to use on our device!
• UX/UI: The UI team has been making some final changes to the UI and has spent some time finding places to optimize our device’s processes.

Though there are not many developments to discuss this week, the team has been working on ensuring we perform well at FDR!

As stated just before, this week was about discussing our plans for FDR, which means we’ve spent a good amount of time discussing the logistics behind it. We’ve finalized how we want to write our documentation and are actively preparing our presentation. Beyond our results, we’ve also received plenty of feedback this week on our product video and our poster! So far, we have gotten lots of feedback, which has been a great reinforcement of our ideas. Our poster (seen to the right) has gotten positive results from our fellow classmates thus far. The poster was inspired by our device’s our own UI, we thought it would be a great way to connect our device to the poster’s design while also being able to effectively communicate ideas-very much like our UI’s goal. We also want to thank Kate for coming up with this great idea, and our liaison and coach for helping us to refine it! For our video, we have some re-filming we want to do, but we are happy with the feedback we got for the general flow of our video and the story we are portraying. These will be both receive some more alteration ahead of FDR.

With the team as a whole being very close to our finished prototype, much more focus this week was put towards preparations for FDR, but we still have some progress to share! This week, as we go through the process of testing our device, we have been focusing on final steps for the complete startup/shutdown of our device. This is one of our final steps to complete device integration, which means we are nearly finished with our prototype! Through the prototype is nearly finished, the 3D printed we order has been stopped for a moment due to some issues with the printer. So while we wait for that, some alterations have been made to our original print to get everything into the device (seen to the left). With this we’ve been able to do some final testing of our device. Other developments made have been more bug fixing of our device’s along with setting up the elements to help with the startup/shutdown process of our device. The AI team has been gathering final datasets and are preparing to do a final round of training!

Next week is our peer-reviewed FDR presentation, so the team will have plenty of great feedback to work off of moving into our final week of development in IPPD! Thank you for reading this week’s blog post from team Electric Eye!

Welcome to team Electric Eye’s blog post for the week of 4/4! We are moving onto our final month, which means we are in the final stretch! So what’s next for us? In this last month, the team will be closing out our project, and preparing for our Final Design Review. Our team is working on creating our product video and preparing a poster ahead of the FDR showcase. The team is also working on finalizing our project with the feedback we received from PID this past week.

As mentioned earlier, this week was Prototype Inspection Day for the spring semester! Similar to the fall PID, we presented our prototype, and discussed the progress we plan to make with the rest of our device. Unlike the fall, this semester was far more focused on presenting a near finished product. With PID this week, we showcased our device’s complete operation and got feedback on some improvements we should make with our design. While we weren’t able to show our final prototype for PID, we were able to present a near finished version. The team is very happy with the results from this semester’s PID and feel confident that we are close to having our desired product prototype for FDR! The team is already actively putting the feedback we received towards our progress, so here are the things we’ve worked on this week:

• Hardware: The team has spent some time with our prints and have decided to do a reprint of part of our casing. They have started to adjust the CAD design of our casing as we prepare for the reprint.
• AI/ML: As part of the advice the team received from PID, they have begun looking into recommended datasets and are looking to adjust some of the ways that the model is being trained (i.e. potentially combine types of data together).
• UX/UI: The UI and Hardware teams worked together this week to tackle an input issue they were running into on the device’s touchscreen. Now the UI team is continuing to optimize the processes on the UI side to help with smooth operation of the device.

Along with feedback/advice from the PID judges on the prototype, we received some ideas on how to better pitch and present our project that we as a team putting into effect.

This week was quite the milestone for our progress this semester. We are nearing the finish line and getting ready for one last push! Thank you for reading this week’s blog post from team Electric Eye!

This week was very productive, with some finishing touches put on the different aspects of our device ahead of PID. Most importantly, this week, the bottom half of our casing finished its 3D print! There are still some small adjustments to be made, but with this being finished, we can now give a full demonstration of our device’s capabilities. Here are some more of our accomplishments from this week:

• Hardware: Beyond getting a completed 3D print for our device’s casing, the hardware team also spent time this week finalizing the .hef file to be used on the device’s AI hat. This should allow our device to operate much faster!
• AI/ML: This week we received our newest model from training! This model is being integrated into the .hef file for next week’s PID.
• UX/UI: Bugs found when running the UI on our hardware were being addressed this week to ensure that our UI is running smoothly ahead of PID.

This week we had the privilege of visiting FPL’s headquarters in Juno Beach for a demo of our device and a tour of their facilities. This was a great chance for our team to meet our liaison and others who close to our project! It was also an amazing team bonding opportunity, though unfortunately Brian was unable to join us for the visit.

A great part of our visit to the FPL headquarters was getting direct feedback on our device during our demo. While the team has received feedback through the QRBs and our updates to our coach/liaison, being able to talk through the current state of our device and the work completed has helped to shape the rest of our development. Having the opportunity to discuss our ideas that tackle the problem FPL gave to us was a unique experience that you can only get as a student through a program like IPPD. The team also got to see the inner workings of FPL and learn more about how the company is shaping the future of energy! It was a truly special experience that that the entire team is happy to have! We want to thank FPL for the hospitality and we appreciate them for giving us an inside look at their headquarters.

With this week being all about connecting the dots, there were some important achievements we made to get to this point. While not every feature has been developed and there is more work to be done, the team is nearly finished putting together our full device. This week we had a successful 3D print of the top half of our device! Currently, we are working on getting the rest of our casing printed and will be able to put all the pieces together for our device soon! With that being said, here are some of the other accomplishments the sub-teams made to help connect the dots this week!

• More on hardware: Beyond our first 3D print, the hardware team has also successfully integrated LED functionality! The hardware team continues to work on our .hef file, and it is almost prepared for final use in our device. For now, the hardware team is waiting for the model to be trained to obtain a final file so they can begin testing!
• AIL/ML: The AI team is continuing work on training the device’s model! Currently we are working on labeling data with CVAT, however there are some small issues that the team has been running into with how the model handles the data. While this is worked on, the team will continue training on what they can for now.
• UI/UX: The UI team have put effort into ensuring that each aspect of the project is connected together and interactable for the user. The device’s UI display’s information about the device and is using the most up-to-date model running locally! The team also finished the “Add Hazard” feature.

Next up for each sub-team is to work on different features and truly get to testing our device. Part of the team’s goal for our trip to FPL is get solid testing results on our device which will help us gauge progress and potential changes we may need to make.

Beyond the progress made towards our device this week, our team also spent time outlining a storyboard for our project pitch! We’ll have more updates on our video in later blog posts. Next week there won’t be a blog post from our team since we will be on spring break, but when we get back, there will be plenty of interesting details to share. Thank you for reading this week’s blog post from team Electric Eye!

This week, the team went to work on completing separate parts of our project. Since we’ve been able to integrate all aspects of the project together, the sub-teams have been developing their separate features. Here’s what each sub-team has been able to accomplish this week:

• The Hardware team has been focused on a few goals: modeling the casing of our device, getting a touch screen running, and refining our local use of AI. This week, the team completed the casing of our device, and our next step is to print it! We also received our touchscreen this week and have began the process of integrating that into our device. On refining our AI usage, a risk that the team recognized moving into our development is popping up. A lack of experience working with this technology is causing some difficulties, but we’ll continue to work on this!
• AI/ML has been steadily training our model through UF’s HiPerGator! A big problem the AI team has ran into is getting properly labeled data, so they’ve began work labeling via CVAT (Computer Vision Annotation Tool), and have also employed the help of other teams to help speed up this process.
• UX/UI has been working on features of our interface with the primary goal being to have the UI completed by the end of March. This week, they managed to get images saved with the hazard’s specific annotation for use in hazard reports.

Our has the normal lecture period next for project development, and our team plans to work on getting every part of the project together on our device to prepare for some aggregate testing! With a trip to FPL headquarters upcoming, we want to ensure that our device is fully prepared!

Thank you for reading this week’s blog post from team Electric Eye. We can’t wait to show you more of what we’re doing very soon!

Besides our work up to QBR2, the team also spent lots of time on development! Here are some of the things our team has accomplished this work:

• The Hardware team has successfully installed our AI chip onto our raspberry Pi!
• AI/ML have been able to successfully create a .hef file for our model to run locally!
• Our UI was cleaned up a bit and had some bugs fixed by the UX/UI team.

The .hef file for our AI is an important accomplishment that is worth mentioning a bit further. A .hef, or “Hailo Executable Format”, file is a binary file that stores a pre-compiled model that is designed to run efficiently on Hailo AI processors. The .hef allows our AI to be run efficiently on our device and frees up more processing power!

Next Steps

With out second QRB finished, the team feels even more confident about the track that we are on. A main point that our team needs to work towards now is testing, which we’ve already set plans to carry out! The progress of our device is going well and the team is excited to continue development knowing we are on the right track. Here are some of the team’s next steps:

• Begin aggregate testing our model.
• Finalize models for our device’s case.
• Continue development of our AI and UI.

We look to continue our development at the pace we’ve been moving, so that we are fully prepared for our second Prototype Inspection Day. Thank you for reading this week’s post from team Electric Eye!

With QRB2 next week, this week was about finalizing the work to be done to meet our goals. Some of our goals for this QRB were mentioned in our blog post from 2 weeks ago, which included: Multi camera functionality from the Hardware team, live detection of key hazards from the AI team, and general page navigation from our UI team. Since then, the team has managed to hit our goals and even go beyond some of them. We wanted to use this week to ensure that the team was on the right track and that we were as prepared as can be for QRB2. Here are some things we got done this week:

• Hardware: New cameras are running on the Pi and can be accessed via the UI!
• AI/ML: Continued training on the UF HiPerGator computer and attained performance metric for each class of objects the AI will detect (which will be used to fine tune our model’s performance).
• UI/UX: Continued development on page navigation and made great progress into data navigation.
• General: Hashed out our TPMs and other testing metrics ahead of our upcoming QBR2.