One of my favorite events at Georgia Tech is the semi-annual Capstone Expo. This is an event where students show off their senior design projects ranging from corporate sponsored to “make the world a better place” projects across all majors and disciplines. There are literally hundreds of senior design projects on display at McCamish Pavilion twice a year.

At the GT Capstone Expo on April 25, 2017, I concentrated on projects in 4 main categories: Drones, ROI value, Smart Home, and Augmented & Virtual Reality (AR / VR). I created and uploaded videos of each presentation to my YouTube channel. I have highlighted below my favorite projects in each category. Disclaimer: This is completely subjective and incomplete as I did not have enough time to visit every project in each category. Watch all Spring 2017 Capstone Expo presentations here.

Drones

Seniorflytus team developed an INDOOR navigation system where a drone leads you to exactly where you need to go. Just follow the drone. The drone also comes equipped with safety features; if the user turns around and walks too far away, the drone automatically lands itself.

Check out their demo here.

ROI Value

This team of Industrial & Systems Engineers created an “uber” solution for UPS to deliver packages during the holiday season for a cost savings of $14 million! Their idea was for UPS to utilize “uber” type drivers to deliver packages and reduce the number of seasonal personnel and brown trucks rented during the busy holiday season.

Smart Home

The Solar Blinds team (aka Innovate Dominate) attached solar panels to blinds and added intelligence for the blinds to auto-adjust to best absorb the rays. The energy from the solar panels is stored and could be used charge your smartphone. They estimated that the blinds would pay for themselves within 4-5 years. These aren’t just solar blinds, they are smart blinds.

Augmented & Virtual Reality (AR/VR)

Team HapticAR wanted to bring ‘touch’ to the Augmented Reality experience. They combined haptic feedback (the vibration response we experience on our smartphones today) with a virtual reality headset to allow a user to actually feel what they are doing when they touch a virtual object.

Most importantly, what I love about the Capstone Expo is learning about student’s hope and dreams. The Smart Glass team wanted to embed a heart rate monitor into the bathroom mirror to warn their users before they have a heart attack! This could save countless lives in the future. The Power Packets team installed solar panels in West Africa, and then 3D printed their smart battery for backup power. The AutoDrone team built their done from scratch to assist first responders in searching treacherous areas.

Still reading? Check out all of the teams in the video playlist below.