Projects, Fall 25 | Ziad Youssfi

Wildfire Detector

Early Detection of Wild Fires Using Drones and Machine Learning

By Tanisha Sethi, Mario Cruz, and Erin Isabel Anand

Posted on January 2, 2026

In order to combat wildfires we explore deploying autonomous drones with fire detection capabilities to enhance early identification and situational awareness. Some key advantages are: (1) Overcoming terrain barriers: Drones can navigate rugged, inaccessible regions where ground sensors or cameras are ineffective; (2) Enhanced Detection Resolution: Flying at lower altitudes... [Read More]

Trash Sorter

A Smart Device to Help Sort Trash into Bins

By Kejia Hu, Bowei Li, and Zijia Liu

Posted on January 2, 2026

Our objectives and motivation are to build a smart device that helps people put trash in the right bin. The target users can be the general public using public recycle bins, organizations running sustainability or recycling programs, or people who have difficulty manually sorting trash. [Read More]

Traffic Sign Alert

On-Edge Stop Sign Recognition and Alert System

By Balaji Sathyanarayanan

Posted on January 2, 2026

I enjoy driving my car both in India and in Pittsburgh. However, I have occasionally experienced challenges in detecting and responding to stop signs in a timely manner. This experience has motivated me to design a Stop Sign Recognition and Alert System. The goal of this system is to enhance... [Read More]

VoiceMod

Fun Speech Converter

By Alejandro Miranda

Posted on January 2, 2026

● What: Real-time speech-to-speech voice conversion system running on embedded hardware ● Why: Privacy-preserving, low-latency voice transformation for entertainment purposes ● For Whom: Entertainment/Recreational Users ● Product-type: Proof-of-concept Get the complete PDF report. [Read More]

Pet Robot

A Fun Companion on your Desk

By Mahlet Mesfin

Posted on January 2, 2026

I wanted to create a responsive pet robot that provides light entertainment and interaction without increasing screen time. It is primarily for anyone seeking fun, interactive desk gadget. It reduces network usage because all inference happens locally; only occasional the model updates or telemetry need network transfer. Because it is... [Read More]

AegisEye

Intelligent Pan-Tilt Face Tracking Camera

By Jesse Barkley and Christian Shimp

Posted on January 2, 2026

Our goal was to deploy a computer vision model on a lightweight, low energy, edge device to detect human faces. Being able to accurately identify human faces and track with low power devices has a wide range of applications from security to personal home robotics that require face identification. [Read More]

Offline Storytelling Companion

Bedtime Story Companion for Kids

By Shreesh Tripathi and Vignesh Natarajan

Posted on January 2, 2026

What: An offline bedtime-story companion on Jetson Orin Nano that generates and narrates kid-safe stories using a tiny LLM + STT/TTS. It is a new product built from open-source components (LLM, TTS) with a safety-first pipeline. Our objective is to deliver safe, customizable, internet-free storytelling with less than 5s start-to-speech... [Read More]

Wearable Motion and Position Monitor

For Sign Language Interpretation

By Adwoa Asare, Tianyi He, and Shao-Ju Wang

Posted on January 2, 2026

We wanted to create a hand position/movement classification glove with applications in human- computer interaction. This is useful for cases where hands need to be tracked without the use of a camera. We use edge processing to maintain user bio-data private and real-time responsiveness. We use multi-sensor fusion to improve... [Read More]

Equine Lameness Detector

Detecting Early Signs for Lameness in Horses

By Inès Maquaire

Posted on January 2, 2026

Equine lameness is one of the most prevalent health issues for horses, causing early retirement, over $5,000 in average vet costs per case. Currently on the market there are multi-sensor lab rigs that cost over $15K. It is estimated that 2 to 3 million horses a year suffer from lameness.... [Read More]

Head-Motion Detection for Computer Interfacing

Control your Computer with your Head!

By Christian Cherry

Posted on January 2, 2026

General use computers and keyboards are commonly made to be used with hands. However, disabled individuals who canʼt extensively use their hands may have trouble using computers. The goal of this project is to use edge AI to detect different head motions of a user to interface with various devices,... [Read More]

Guitar Helper

Learn to Play the Guitar from other Songs

By George Pan, Harvey Ko, and Harrison Lo

Posted on January 2, 2026

Guitar Helper: an embedded ML system that listens to short audio snippets of strummed chords and classifies them in real time. Beginners struggle with chord memorization and fast chord changes. It is also difficult to find chord progressions online for less popular songs. We wanted to create a palm-sized “Guitar... [Read More]

Footstep Classifier

Identify People from their Footsteps

By Andrew Yu

Posted on January 2, 2026

The objective of this project us using off-body sensors to classify footsteps and identify people. The motivation was that it is a cool project to try. The target use case is security. The embedded ML rationale for it was low cost, low latency, and a private solution [Read More]

Off the Cuff

Blood Pressure Monitoring Device

By Om Kulkarni, Pradhumna Guru Prasad, and Aidan Vogt

Posted on January 2, 2026

In the current state, blood pressure monitoring is episodic and intrusive (cuff). The gap: Hypertension is dynamic – A snapshot once in a while misses the full picture. Our solution: An embedded deep learning enabled device with the capability of continuous, passive monitoring using a single optical sensor. [Read More]

ALFORM

Articulatory Labeling For Optimal Real-time MRI Experiments

By Joseph Konan

Posted on January 2, 2026

The objective for this project is to build a device for MRI technologists and researchers who need reliable articulatory data without wasting scanner time. The ALFORM system IS A real-time articulatory tracking tool that shows which articulators are being used and how often, while you scan. Unlike expensive trial-and-error experiments... [Read More]

Mind Drive

EEG-Controlled Arduino Car

By Runtian (Toby) Yang, Patarapornkan (Pat) Anantarangsi, and Yicheng Rong

Posted on January 2, 2026

Electroencephalogram (EEG), also known as “brain wave”, is a promising brain computer interface (BCI) technology that is low-cost and noninvasive. Our goal is to build a prototype device that can read EEG, decode the user intent, and use that to control an Arduino Car. The target users would be disabled... [Read More]

CatMotion

Cat Behavior Classification

By Lin Zhan, Junrui Zhao

Posted on January 2, 2026

Our Goal is to develop a wearable device that classifies cat behaviors (e.g., rest, walk, feed) using motion sensor data as a cat-mounted smart collar system. Our motivation is to catch early changes in cat behavior that may signal cat health issues, and our objective to enable continuous, real-time cat... [Read More]