Project Archive 2020
Project Archive: Spring 2020
(Click the photos to see a slideshow!)
(We cancelled our last 4 workshops and the final project showcase because of the pandemic this semester)
Food Science
Project Advisors: Jonathan Huang, Evelyn (Chenxu) Li
The high schoolers didn't have much of a goal to accomplish when they first came in because they didn't really know what food science really was. It was a learning experience for both the students and the advisors. But after talking a bit more, they seemed pretty interested in just creating a project from scratch, no matter what that may look like. Brainstorming is a pretty difficult part of any project, for any field, and that was definitely the case for us. The first few workshops were used to watch some youtube videos and read up on other sources to find an idea that we could all get behind. We were finally able to agree on a three-way comparison of home-made, store-bought, and brand-name of a food product. We decided on making macaroni and cheese because that was simple and we could find different recipes online. We had success testing recipes that we found online and cooking for the other groups.
We were able to test different brand name mac and cheese with the ones we made, but did not have time to test mac and cheese from a restaurant. It was definitely a great time testing the various mac and cheese, not only an educational experiment but also a delicious one as well.
ROBOTICS LAB
Project Advisors: Anthony Hsu, Alex Ching, Brandon Wang, Edward Lu, Tyler Sikov
Students set out to build interactive Pololu 3pi and Romi robots that could autonomously complete various tasks as part of a "Robot Olympics". The students learned to assemble robots, solder connections, and program LEDs, motors, and sensors in Arduino/C++. Our biggest challenge was using the Pololu C++ libraries to precisely control various robot components. Though the project was cut short by the coronavirus, we managed to assemble all the robots, perform basic line-following and PID control with the 3pi robots, and pick up small objects with the Romi robot's gripper arm attachment. At the beginning of the semester, we also had some fun rigging a DJI Spark drone to transport Kit Kat bars.
‘AR’-T INSTALLATION
Project Advisors: Alice Russell, Nila Ramaswamy
From the start, our group wanted to create an art installation that brought awareness for social issues via Augmented Reality. Through extensive brainstorming and research, we decided to represent environmental issues in an interactive way. The goal was to create videos to address litter control, water pollution, fast fashion, electricity consumption, and general environmental awareness.
To execute this project, students had to learn animation and 3D modeling skills including developing sketches on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Animate, and bringing the drawings to life using Adobe Aero. Since many students had no previous coding or animating experience, we had a large learning curve to cross by getting accustomed to various software.
The final videos would have been projected for the showcase, with 3D renderings of key objects available to the audience to interact with on Snapchat or Adobe Aero. Even though we did not have an opportunity to complete the project, we all had a great time developing animated objects and creating fun videos around campus as we developed our art installation. And we'd like to thank the Food Science group for their weekly mac and cheese supply :-)
ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY
Project Advisors: Samuel Leong, Maggie Huang, Mahima Pannala
The students brainstormed some different ideas but decided to build this water garbage collector. Their goal was to create the Swimmy Binny, which is a trash can that robotically collects trash in the water and recycled materials cleaning bodies of water. They drew out drafts, ordered the materials, prototyped using cups and rocks, made an initial model and tested on it. Although we weren’t able to finish the project because of the pandemic, we’ve came a long way and enjoyed the process!
VR GAME
Project Advisors: Brandon Wei, Grace Kang
There has been a recent explosion in the gaming community about brining more titles to Virtual Reality headsets. What new games can we make for VR? In what ways can we leverage VR interactions to make novel game mechanics? Use a VR headset to design and test your own games.
Keywords: sound recording, game development, computer graphics, music
MUSIC PSYCHOLOGY
Project Advisors: Michelle Tse, Isabel Brum
From the start, it took us a while to figure out what exactly we wanted to do. It first started out with us learning how to use a soundboard, trying to create different melodies and perhaps even create a song. However, we came to the realization that learning this machine is a lot harder than we thought. As we brainstormed more and more, we realized that we were very curious with the idea of how certain music makes us feel.
So, we came up with this final idea: there are three different groups (control song, happy song, sad song). We randomly assigned Project Ignite participants to a track. We would play them a track (depending on which group they are in) and then ask them to draw a picture based on what they are thinking of while listening to the music. We wanted to take into account the key characteristics of the drawings, for example how much did they draw, what they drew, what colors they used, etc. With this experiment, we wanted to find out how the tone of music relates to our emotions.
We tricked the other groups into thinking we were going to perform a totally different project so that there would be no bias. While we didn’t get to actually perform the experiment, it was fun to learn about the different elements of psychology and music and we hope this project or something similar to this project can be done in the future!
AI STORY GENERATOR
Project Advisors: Abby Chen, Bonnie Chan, Sydney Dunn
How do we write a story? What makes a good story, well, good? How could we teach AI to write us a bedtime story or tell us a story by the fire on a cold winter’s day? Instead of studying books like in school, tell your AI to study millions of books and write you your very own story.
Keywords: machine-learning, literature
CREATIVE MACHINE LEARNING
Project Advisors: Edward Li, Keying Wang, Chanaradee Leelamanthep
Under this broad topic of machine learning, where would your imagination take you to? Just be creative and do whatever you want with ML, biology, physics, arts, language, finance, or even public policy!
Keywords: machine-learning, interdisciplinary
GOOD-NIGHT FILTER
Project Advisors: Andy Zhang, Abigail Berger
We all use our phones and devices when we go to bed. What if there was a better way to look at our screen that could reduce strain on our eyes and make it easier to fall asleep?
Keywords: research, design, psychology, computer graphics