Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
33 Budget Clip-On Posture Checker
 Ashit Anandkumar
Destiny Jefferson
Edward Ruan
 Wenjing Song design_document1.pdf
proposal1.pdf
Title: Budget Clip-On Posture Checker


Team Members:
- Ashit Anandkumar (aa97)
- Edward Ruan (eruan3)
- Destiny Jefferson (djeff4)

# Problem

Describe the problem you want to solve and motivate the need.

Today, people work long hours at desks, either using their computers or mobile devices. This leads to poor posture whether it be through rounding shoulders, slouching, or tilting their head forward. These poor habits can lead to chronic neck, back, and shoulder pain, fatigue, and possibly some spinal and musculoskeletal issues. Most of the time people subconsciously fall into a position of poor posture and don’t notice its negative effects until they experience discomfort. Current solutions include either having a brace which is restrictive and expensive, an application that uses cameras which require users to sit in front of which is tedious and impractical, and reminders that occur without measuring actual poor posture which people tend to ignore. There needs to be a discreet solution that can accurately monitor posture in real time, provide immediate feedback, and is portable. There is currently a product on amazon that does this, but this product is expensive and no one should be emptying their wallet for a simple but useful posture checker device.

# Solution

Describe your design at a high-level, how it solves the problem, and introduce the subsystems of your project.

The Clip-On Posture Checker will be an affordable small wearable device that is clipped onto the user’s upper shirt or upper body. This device will continuously monitor the body’s orientation and its deviation from proper posture. Everyone’s proper posture is different which is why the device has a calibration button the user can press when sitting/standing in their proper posture, after a set time the device will be calibrated. Within a set parameter, a deviation outside of this calibrated range will trigger immediate feedback. When the user slouches or leans forward a lot, the device will immediately provide haptic feedback which will prompt the user to correct their posture.







# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1 - Sensory

This sensory subsystem will detect the user’s orientation and motion. The component(s) required will be something like an ICM-20948, which contains an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer to properly detect user posture deviation from their calibrated proper posture.

## Subsystem 2 - Processing/MCU

For the processing subsystem, we will use the Arduino Nono 33 BLE or ESP32 to handle all the sensor data collection, filtration and feedback control. Both these microcontrollers have a compact size and will help fit into this wearable project. The microcontroller will continuously read the orientation and acceleration sensors and be able to calculate whether the posture is correct or not. Additionally, there will be a filtration system to calculate the tilt/change in posture from the calibrated position. Additionally, the filtration system will also be able to detect if it is just a slight movement by the user or a posture change. Lastly the microcontroller will be in charge of sending feedback to the user to help indicate to the user that there is a change in posture.

## Subsystem 3 - Feedback

This feedback subsystem serves to notify the user in real-time when they have poor posture. It will be a simple vibration motor for haptic feedback, a ERM motor will suffice, optionally LEDs or a buzzer can also be included.

## Subsystem 4 - Power

This power subsystem will provide stable power and lasting operation to ensure proper posture checking behaviour. The components required would be a small rechargeable 3.7V LiPo battery @200-500 mAh, a voltage regulator for the MCU, and a battery charging circuit.

## Subsystem 5 - Enclosure

This mechanical subsystem serves to enclose the entire device and its components, the components could simply be a plastic shell to hold all the components and a metal clip so the user can clip on the device to their body.

# Criterion For Success

Describe high-level goals that your project needs to achieve to be effective. These goals need to be clearly testable and not subjective.

For the device to be successful, the device shall detect the user’s torso tilt angle within ±5° accuracy relative to the calibrated upright posture. The device shall provide real-time feedback (vibration or LED) within 1 second when posture deviation exceeds a threshold angle (e.g., 15° forward lean). The device shall operate continuously for at least 8 hours on a single battery charge. The device shall log posture data with a time resolution of at least 1 minute and store or transmit a minimum of 24 hours of usage history.

Remotely Controlled Self-balancing Mini Bike

Will Chen, Eric Tang, Jiaming Xu

Featured Project

# Remotely Controlled Self-balancing Mini Bike

Team Members:

- Will Chen hongyuc5

- Jiaming Xu jx30

- Eric Tang leweit2

# Problem

Bike Share and scooter share have become more popular all over the world these years. This mode of travel is gradually gaining recognition and support. Champaign also has a company that provides this service called Veo. Short-distance traveling with shared bikes between school buildings and bus stops is convenient. However, since they will be randomly parked around the entire city when we need to use them, we often need to look for where the bike is parked and walk to the bike's location. Some of the potential solutions are not ideal, for example: collecting and redistributing all of the bikes once in a while is going to be costly and inefficient; using enough bikes to saturate the region is also very cost inefficient.

# Solution

We think the best way to solve the above problem is to create a self-balancing and moving bike, which users can call bikes to self-drive to their location. To make this solution possible we first need to design a bike that can self-balance. After that, we will add a remote control feature to control the bike movement. Considering the possibilities for demonstration are complicated for a real bike, we will design a scaled-down mini bicycle to apply our self-balancing and remote control functions.

# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1: Self-balancing part

The self-balancing subsystem is the most important component of this project: it will use one reaction wheel with a Brushless DC motor to balance the bike based on reading from the accelerometer.

MPU-6050 Accelerometer gyroscope sensor: it will measure the velocity, acceleration, orientation, and displacement of the object it attaches to, and, with this information, we could implement the corresponding control algorithm on the reaction wheel to balance the bike.

Brushless DC motor: it will be used to rotate the reaction wheel. BLDC motors tend to have better efficiency and speed control than other motors.

Reaction wheel: we will design the reaction wheel by ourselves in Solidworks, and ask the ECE machine shop to help us machine the metal part.

Battery: it will be used to power the BLDC motor for the reaction wheel, the stepper motor for steering, and another BLDC motor for movement. We are considering using an 11.1 Volt LiPo battery.

Processor: we will use STM32F103C8T6 as the brain for this project to complete the application of control algorithms and the coordination between various subsystems.

## Subsystem 2: Bike movement, steering, and remote control

This subsystem will accomplish bike movement and steering with remote control.

Servo motor for movement: it will be used to rotate one of the wheels to achieve bike movement. Servo motors tend to have better efficiency and speed control than other motors.

Stepper motor for steering: in general, stepper motors have better precision and provide higher torque at low speeds than other motors, which makes them perfect for steering the handlebar.

ESP32 2.4GHz Dual-Core WiFi Bluetooth Processor: it has both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity so it could be used for receiving messages from remote controllers such as Xbox controllers or mobile phones.

## Subsystem 3: Bike structure design

We plan to design the bike frame structure with Solidworks and have it printed out with a 3D printer. At least one of our team members has previous experience in Solidworks and 3D printing, and we have access to a 3D printer.

3D Printed parts: we plan to use PETG material to print all the bike structure parts. PETG is known to be stronger, more durable, and more heat resistant than PLA.

PCB: The PCB will contain several parts mentioned above such as ESP32, MPU6050, STM32, motor driver chips, and other electronic components

## Bonus Subsystem4: Collision check and obstacle avoidance

To detect the obstacles, we are considering using ultrasonic sensors HC-SR04

or cameras such as the OV7725 Camera function with stm32 with an obstacle detection algorithm. Based on the messages received from these sensors, the bicycle could turn left or right to avoid.

# Criterion For Success

The bike could be self-balanced.

The bike could recover from small external disturbances and maintain self-balancing.

The bike movement and steering could be remotely controlled by the user.

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