The Senior Capstone Program in Engineering (SCOPE) is the culminating experience of an Olin student's education. Over the course of a full academic year, seniors work in multi-disciplinary teams to provide innovative solutions to private and public sector companies’ real-world problems. This collection includes reports and final work from past SCOPE projects.
Endoscopic Band Ligation is a hemostasis technique used for esophageal varices, which are protruding vessels caused by hypertension in the portal venous system. The band ligator is an attachment to the distal end of an endoscope that deploys elastomeric bands over varices, cutting off blood flow, and eventually causing the varices to fall off. The current treatment device involves a tedious, laborious assembly by the factory workers. There are additional product development opportunities in usability and alternative methods of band deployment. Therefore, the Olin College SCOPE team is working with Boston Scientific to investigate designs for alternate methods of ligation band deployment that address these issues. The project will involve mechanical design, component testing, materials selection and analysis, and manufacturing analysis. The team will brainstorm concepts and develop rough prototype devices. They will then use modeling, prototyping and testing methods to assess the effectiveness of the final design. The main goal of the project is to provide Boston Scientific with a prototyped design that increases the product's manufacturability and meets the needs of their customers.
The next generation worker has grown in a world much different than the generation before. They do not know a world without the internet, they learn to solve problems and collaborate inside their gaming environments, and they multi-task with the tools of their generation. Their work habits, attitudes, and values are quite different. Many forward thinking companies are beginning to untangle the value proposition of this next generation and look at how to attract, retain, and leverage their skills to the fullest. To this end, the MITRE has sponsored our team to look at future collaboration environments, tools and workspaces to nurture these abilities and gain insight into novel ways to accomplish traditional knowledge worker tasks.
The Rockwell Automation SCOPE team is working to identify, assess and develop a viable business application for a MEMS based microfluidic sensor chip developed by the RA Advanced Technology Lab. In keeping with Rockwell Automation's business structure, the team's focus will be on solving customer problems as they relate to an industrial, rather than consumer setting. The team will begin at a broad level, gaining exposure to various industries and their processes, which will then serve as a lead to begin identifying applications. Next, in consultation with the sponsor, the most promising ideas will be chosen based on technical feasibility, potential market value and potential user value. Once the first stages leading to application identification have been completed, we will continue work on the integration of the chip into a commercially viable modular sensing head, with the possibility of developing middle electronics and firmware.
The aPriori Enterprise Cost Management software platform improves the financial results of discrete manufacturing and product companies by enabling them to actively control Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) with real-time, predictive and precise product cost assessments. aPriori's proven and patent-protected software platform allows companies to assess, control and reduce the cost of their products in real time, at any time during design, sourcing and manufacture. To learn more about aPriori, please visit www.apriori.com. The most critical components of the aPriori enterprise cost management platform are the physical and cost models of the common manufacturing processes in use today. Currently, the aPriori platform supports processes including sheet metal fabrication, stage tooling, welded assemblies, injection molding, 3-axis machining, sand casting and die casting. The aPriori SCOPE team will help aPriori expand the number of processes supported by their software by developing cost models for a range of Surface Treatment Processes such as painting and plating. Also, the cost information for each process must be updated periodically as the manufacturing markets change over time. The team will work with aPriori to develop an application to allow both customers and the aPriori services team to create, manage and maintain critical production data for multiple manufacturing locations worldwide.
Microfluidics is rapidly becoming a large field in research, especially for medical applications. Two of its most attractive attributes are the ability to perform high-throughput experiments and the ability to use extremely low volumes of limited samples. Different microfluidics systems can be optimized for either of these properties. The Fraden Research Group at Brandeis University has created a prototype of a system that manually produces a few drops on demand, using extremely low volumes of rare, expensive samples. However, this system’s current hardware and software setup is not optimized, is expensive and operator-dependent. The Brandeis-Olin SCOPE team worked to automate this process by designing a portable platform for drop-on-demand technology using electrical controllers, pneumatic systems, and image processing algorithms.
Innovation in CT scanners lies in improving the quality of the images and decreasing scan times; thus as the number of elements in 2-D CT detector arrays and rotation speed both increase newer scanners will produce more data at higher rates, and demand a higher throughput on the wireless data link. The solution proposed by the Analogic SCOPE team takes better advantage of the properties of the available wireless link to obtain a significant increase in data capacity. This approach can be the basis for meeting the expected increase in data transfer requirements for future products.
Orica is a multinational supplier of mining chemicals and services. The Orica-Olin SCOPE team investigated opportunities for automation of dirty and dangerous tasks associated with the surface mining process, for example the blasting of existing boreholes. Our project is the first step: building an automated proof-of-principle which uses stereo vision to identify holes and moves a laser pointer over the center of each hole.
This SCOPE team worked in collaboration with the Army Research Lab to design and fabricate a small, man-portable, autonomous ground vehicle to support ARL's research work in advanced autonomy algorithms. The goal of the project was to develop a platform that provides the necessary functionality for research robotics at a significantly lower cost than those currently on the market. The system supports modular payloads to allow sensors to be easily swapped in and out for different research and testing needs.
The goal of the Raytheon-Olin SCOPE team was to identify pairs of communication and radar waveforms that could be superimposed through a single nonlinear amplifier while still fulfilling primary communications and radar functions. The team investigated candidate performance using hardware experimentation and industry-standard simulation. The results of this study begin to define the conditions for successful simultaneous communications and radar transmission through a single non-linear amplifier.
The Facebook-Olin SCOPE team built a platform that catalyzes the growth of an ecosystem around devices that document and share everyday interactions in the physical world. Facebook’s Open Graph allows people to record and share their online activities and interactions to their timeline through third-party apps such as Spotify and social newsreaders like the HuffPost Social Reader. However, the majority of a person’s interactions occur in the physical world, a domain that currently lacks a comprehensive means of seamless social-sharing. The Facebook-Olin SCOPE team imagined, prototyped, and fostered excitement around a compelling hardware device that integrates with Facebook’s Open Graph API (Application Programming Interface). The team then designed a hardware platform that developers and other third-parties were excited to build upon. The final stage of the process involved the release and marketing of this platform in order to inspire and spur interest of hardware applications connected to the Open Graph.
Autodesk has developed a collection of five simple 3D modeling applications aimed for prominence in the consumer computer-aided design software market. They are interoperable and all can post content to a shared 123D online community. The mission of this project is to design a solution that enhances the experience of students using the 123D software.
Optimizing airplane components for mass while ensuring the part will still be strong enough to stand up to the heavy loads experienced during flight requires the use of powerful computational optimization software. This software must have the capabilities of modeling a part’s behavior when various changes are made to the geometric design that would affect the part’s final mass. Although this specialized software is very powerful, it can be complicated and difficult to use. After exploring the optimization process, the Boeing-Olin SCOPE team identified areas of opportunities within the method, and decided to focus on the learning process.
The Boston Scientific SCOPE Team researched bronchoscopy tools and procedures and worked with physicians to develop areas of opportunity for Boston Scientific’s pulmonary development team. Boston Scientific asked the team to investigate the problem space of pulmonary lesion identification and diagnosis and develop a solution space. The team researched 5 tissue properties that could be measured and came up with 5 requirements to ensure successful tissue differentiation. The team selected the tissue property that best met the requirements to distinguish between healthy and lesion tissue.
The FAA has indicated plans to allow commercial use of UAVs beginning September 30, 2015. Agriculture is a prime potential application, and AGCO would like to be prepared to take advantage of such an opportunity. As a part of the AGCO R&D team, the AGCO SCOPE team had 5 main goals: explore potential uses for an agricultural UAV and develop a compelling use model, Design a preliminary system architecture, create a demonstration prototype, documenting the process for AGCO’s future use, evaluate the potential financial benefits to farmers to determine whether a commercial agricultural UAV is a worthwhile pursuit for AGCO, and identify problems that must be solved in order to create a fully functional, commercial product.
The Hutchinson/Barry Controls-Olin SCOPE team worked to develop an active vibration control system for hand-held construction equipment. Workers who use this equipment for extended periods of time are in danger of developing hand-arm vibration syndrome, a condition that can result in severe nerve damage. Decreasing construction equipment vibration will not only protect workers’ health but also save companies time, cost, and resources. Every current active vibration control system Barry Controls creates is highly specialized and time-consuming to develop and install. Barry Controls would like to move toward developing solutions that are more widely applicable, and therefore challenged the SCOPE team to create an active control system that is less specialized and more efficient to implement than previous Barry Controls systems. During the fall semester, the team identified market areas that could benefit from simple active control systems. After deciding to focus on construction equipment, the team devoted the spring semester to designing, prototyping, and testing their active control system on an electric breaker.
This SCOPE team was tasked with building a lawnmower which would sense the state of the mower and its surroundings, allow the driver to have an informed view of the surroundings, record driving dynamics for future analysis and increase safety and driving performance. They implemented sensors to detect a variety of mower dynamics for research as well as a slope limiting mechanism and a drive-by-wire system for improved safety.
The Parietal Systems-Olin SCOPE team developed a shared, location-based, to-do list application for iOS which uses "The Reality Miners" platform as a service. The idea was selected from over 800 location-based app ideas generated through the innovation tournament process. While developing the app, the team evaluated and provided feedback on Parietal's Geo Toolkit, which provides a database for developers that stores location data associated with specific users.
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is one of the most common sports injuries in the United States with over 100,000 cases per year.. In order to return functionality to the knee, ACL reconstruction surgery is performed using grafts such as hamstring tendon, patellar tendon, and allograft tissue grafts. Due to a high post-surgical failure rate of 10-15%, there is a need for alternatives to existing surgical tools and practices. The DePuy Mitek-Olin SCOPE team was tasked with designing and developing such alternatives. The goals of this project were to understand the surgical processes of ACL reconstruction, identify areas of opportunity, delineate critical product requirements, and prototype a functionalproduct concept. Using a surgeon-oriented design process, the team built and demonstrated the use of a fully functional prototype of a new surgical tool for ACLR.