Final-year students will be showcasing their stellar technological capstone projects during the first-ever faculty-wide McMaster Engineering Capstone Expo this week.
The event, which will be held on Thursday, April 8th from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm., will feature 200 capstone groups (approx. 1,000 students) from across all seven engineering departments and the Bachelor of Technology program.
Students will present their designs in an exciting virtual trade show, featuring a booth-style format complete with high-quality videos and real-time demos and Q&As showing the functionality of a design.
Projects will be divided into industry-relevant themes — which are also the cornerstone of McMaster Engineering’s applied research — including Advanced Manufacturing, Digital & Smart Systems, Energy, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Environment, Health & Bio-innovation, Infrastructure and Transportation.
“The capstone project represents the culmination of one’s engineering studies,” said Andre Phillion, Director Experiential Learning and an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “I am excited to engage with our students during the Expo and to learn how they’ve worked together during this extraordinary year to creatively demonstrate their engineering solutions to a real-life problem.”
Here is a sample of this year’s projects:
- Project: BravEye assists firefighters by visualizing their surroundings and warning them of potential hazards such as fire hotspots. This will be done with a Raspberry Pi, thermal camera, LIDAR sensor, and our own signal processing software. (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
- Project: CookIt! is an easy-to-use phone app solution for home cooks to make perfectly cooked meals every time. The app uses heat transfer simulations based on the mass and type of the cut of meat being cooked to return optimized cooking parameters (temperature, time etc.) to the user. (Engineering Physics)
- Project: Third Wheel is a Human Machine Interface, or, HMI, that connects the driver to the autonomous safety features of their vehicle through an interactive in-car tutorial. (Computing and Software)
- Project:Piano Performance Pal (PP-Pal is an autonomous robotic device able to perform music from digital files on a physical 88-key piano. (Computing and Software)
- Project: Implementing Biodegradable Plastic On-Shelf: To find biodegradable plastic alternatives to the current plastics used by toy company Spin Master in their highly successful product Kumi Kreator and Go-Glam Nail Studio. (Materials Science & Engineering)
- Project: Process Development of Nano-Surface Patterning the Inside of Vascular Catheters: Designed a method to imprint the inner diameter of a vascular catheter with a pattern to increase biocompatibility while maintaining acceptable mechanical properties. (Materials Science & Engineering)
READ more in this Fireball Diary entry about one team from Engineering Physics’ experience working on a capstone project with a private company with the goal of developing a secure communications network (Quantum Key Distribution) using micro satellites.
In previous years, several capstone project teams have gone on to become companies or win accolades, most notably The sKan, which won the 2017 James Dyson International Award for innovation.
Everyone is invited to attend the engineering capstone expo. Registration for this free event is required.
