ECE Students Update Senior Design Project for Coronavirus

Units across campus have shifted from in-person interactions to virtual meetings, and Interdisciplinary Capstone is no exception. But, since engineering design projects are centered around construction, collaboration and other hands-on work, many teams have had to apply their engineering know-how and problem-solving skills to adapt their projects to new circumstances.

Team 19088, sponsored by the Arizona Center for Accelerated Biomedical Innovation, developed a mixed-reality system that provides real-time feedback to people practicing CPR. This consists of a virtual reality headset and an elastic glove equipped with sensors that can monitor a user’s movements on a dummy.

One of the team’s biggest challenges was finding a method sensitive enough to determine the correct distance the chest should be pushed down in a CPR chest compression. When the accelerometer they tried at first proved to be an ineffective method for measuring depth, they did some out-of-the-box thinking and chose ultrasonic sensors instead.

“I was interested in applying new technologies, like augmented reality, to potentially life-saving and real-world scenarios,” said ECE team member Minh Nguyen.