Applied Research Projects & Investigations

These projects are experiments in recent advancements in a variety of research areas. Most relate to Extended Reality or Advanced Visualization Systems. Some touch on Machine Learning, Artificial intelligence, Simulation, and Robotics. This is just a sampling of projects I have worked.

This list of projects was last updated: April 2023.
See also my CS sketch portfolio.

Automated Fall Detection via Webcam

Research Hypothesis: Video from a webcam may be processed using current ml5.ps posenet library to capture skeleton of a human. An algorithm may be applied to this skeleton to achieve real-time detection of a fall event. Motivation: Numerous fall related injuries occur every day. In the event the person falling is alone, an automated detection system could be used to alert others in a timely manner.

Novelty: This uses a single webcam. It uses existing ml5.js and p5.js libraries. The algorithms being investigated are derived from papers using accelerometers and other physically attached sensors. Additional data from the skeletal tracking is used to supplement the algorithms. Thus no extra sensors are required. Final implementation is targetted for a standalone hardware device composed of a camera, a computational-unit, and some additional components for connecting to various safety/security networks.

Results: Current results are limited. More advanced algorithms are being tested. This is an early proof of concept.

The demo requires an https connection. My SSL certificate sometimes expires before I have the money to renew it. So you may encounter some browser questions... In all cases you will have to allow the browser access to your webcam. All processing is done locally. Nothing will be stored on this server. The record button is a toggle. Press it to begin recording. Press it again to stop. The recording is done using your computer's memory (RAM). So do not record for long durations. When you stop - it may ask you to 'download' the .webm file, it is really just writing it out from memory.

Please try out the demo -- noting the above SSL and https comments.

Automated Landing of a Rocket: Simulation and Visualization

This project demonstrates the viability of using HTML5, WebGL, and JavaScript to visualize complicated sets of data. To accomplish this a simulation of a simulation of a self-landing rocket system was created. This was followed by the creation of a visualization program to take the output of the simulation and display it in a meaningful way to humans. The details of this project can be found on this page.

Robotic Remote Control: Web-based

This project allows a user to remotely control a robot. This is accomplished by creating a webserver on a computer near the robot. They are connected together by USB cables. The remote user then connects to the server using any webbrowser. This presents a simple robot control interface to the user - typically button based. The commands are relayed from the remote user to the local webserver via websockets. These commands are then processed and relayed to the robot through backend Python scripts. Details of this project can be found on this page.

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