Senior Design Project Details 2022-23

The goal of this project is to design, build and leverage a user-friendly, standardized, custom solution to seamlessly manage test cases, easily track, and manage defects, and output robust reporting. The pilot system will replace an outdated tool currently lacking in useable reporting metrics and capacity for fewer than 40 users. The tool will be used within our IT organization for all projects. The largest opportunities for this project are an overall annual cost savings of $200,000, future integration with work and service management tools, and a system designed with an end user in mind. These automations will drive engagement so that portfolios will have input test cases in the new tool and become a basis for our testing automation initiative. This pilot will help us discover if we should expand and scale this pilot and leverage this new system as our enterprise solution. Build Testing Management Solution pilot to catalog and track test steps to critical regression test cases, that are managed and documented to build the automations.

• Build an integrated defect management tool pilot to track defects within each product by measuring critical attributes such as priority, criticality, release cycle, etc.
• Build a robust, standardized reporting dashboard to display data on testing cycles and defect management for the organization.

The objective of this project is to develop a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Application. Currently, there is no central location to store and access all customer information. This poses problems when trying to access the most recent information, whether it’s related to contracts, accessorial terms, visits with the customer, etc.

The developed application will display key information about customers and will allow users from various departments to enter information about customers and have it stored in a SQL database. In addition, the application will have the functionality to store documents such as current contracts, and customer scorecards, and send notifications when there are specific changes to a customer’s profile.

The software package that is the subject of the Project is marketed as “The New Approach to Financial Accounting, Auditing, and Reporting.” It is typically referred to as “The New Approach”, or just NA. NA is only the third type of financial accounting system in world history, the other two being single entry financial accounting, and double entry financial accounting.

To get started, this Senior Design project is NOT focused on re-designing the basics of NA as it looks and performs today. The focus of this project includes the following:

• Conversion of the database from Access to a more robust database
• Conversion of the programming language from Visual Basic 6.0 to C# using the .Net platform.
• Consultation on updating the current “report writer” Crystal Reports (Business Objects)
• Consultation on the possible addition of Cloud capability or be setup up to add it later. The “cloud” capability could be a very important feature for certain types of users, particularly for multi-segment small businesses. I’m not sure about big corporations, states, or universities.

Every year data access and what you do with that data become increasingly important. Providing customers with a method to gain insights from their data while making it easy enough and dynamic enough to cater to different businesses is key to the long-term data strategy. This project will create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be embedded into any of the applications.

Analyzing data and presentation models to make it as easy as possible for customers to build out data relevant to their business or discover insights from their data they may not have seen otherwise. The long-term vision is to also use these with the Hardwood Lumber Inventory Management (acquired company’s software) “eLIMBS” as well as the Australian-based software, Frameworks. One of the goals of the project work will be to have as much reusable code as possible across multiple platforms, including eLIMBS and Frameworks.

Fast Forward is building vehicle-based technology to inspect powerlines from all paved and non-paved roadways including alleys and points, not on a traditional navigation application, where powerlines are nearby. A roof-mounted camera system is utilized to take pictures of powerlines on both sides of the road. The challenge is to identify which poles are in scope to drive the routes efficiently, not backtracking.

This project's focus is to create an app where the admin could upload a project boundary containing powerline pole data, and the application would calculate an efficient route to drive by all poles within 125’ of a road. The route would be assessable via mobile device using active GPS, where they could follow the route, and accommodate route adjustments in the event of a missed turn or closure. The mobile functionality should plan for loss of cell signal, and data caching may be required.

Main challenges:

• Convert .shp data of poles and identify the poles within the scope of driving (approx. 125’ of any roadway)
• Efficient route creation based on the user-specified start point
• Field navigation application to guide the driver of the vehicle to follow the proposed route, and adjust for roadway closures, missed turns, and driver route overrides.

Clearly seeing the score of an in-progress basketball game is key to providing the best experience for players, coaches, and fans. Currently, Hudl’s Indoor Focus camera captures the full court and provides a picture-in-picture view of the scoreboard when live-streaming a game. In some cases, the scoreboard is difficult to read if the image is too small or the scoreboard is at a suboptimal viewing angle.

The objective of this project is to stream real-time scoreboard data alongside video when live-streaming a basketball game on a Hudl Indoor Focus camera. Then use the scoreboard data to display a digital graphic overlay of each team’s score on the video live stream. This will allow coaches and athletes to concentrate on their performance and not worry about the quality of the videos. The end goal also requires no human input – the camera must be able to read the teams’ scores from the scoreboard and relay that information to Hudl’s video playback services.

The scope of this project includes:

• Evaluate Hudl’s two in-house scoreboard OCR models and give a recommendation on which will work best for the project goals.
• Integrate the recommended model with a Hudl Focus Indoor camera.
• Stream scoreboard data from the model in real-time to Hudl’s backend systems.
• Use the data to overlay score information on the live-streaming video.

For many years MRP had desired to develop a video game app for baldorf but lacked the expertise and funding to do so. This project seeks to continue and expand the work of the last Senior Design project. There are some key targets of the original baldorf gaming app project that were not met, mostly due to the disruption brought on by the Covid-19 health crisis. Continuation of this project will provide the student team with four development options/learning opportunities. First, the current app will be thoroughly reviewed to identify and fix minor bugs & errors still present in the game. Second, the app has a wide space to customize the game with characters, settings, stories, etc. This would be done to enhance the user experience. The third development option is the creation of a multi-player online feature for the app. Currently, there is a multi-player option for the app, but players must be in the same space and use the same device. Finally, there was a discussion during the original project on how to monetize the game to support MRP’s community development projects. Possible solutions to this issue can also be explored. MRP hopes that these features can be developed and the current baldorf app updated through this.

The Nebraska Environmental Trust is a state non-code agency dedicated to the preservation of Nebraska's natural resources. The Trust provides seed money to preserve critical habitat areas, protect water supplies, and establish recycling programs in Nebraska through a combination of lottery proceeds and private donations. The Trust provides more than 20 million dollars of grant funding annually, through the proceeds of the Nebraska Lottery, to Nebraska projects. All grantee projects are required to have an audit. The additional tracking for equipment, insurance, land, and taxes are currently done in a new system. This project will create functions in a .net-based web application.

The proposed system scope will create functions for the inspection officer of an awarded project to:

• Access the grantee application and contract
• Access and review grantee disbursements
• Determine when 50% of awarded funds have been drawn down
• Generate notices of inspection/audit required
• Cross-reference disbursements with invoices and application goals
• Cross-reference personal property (equipment) entered into the system with insurance access and automated reporting of those items
• Complete digital matrix of inspection/audit evaluation
• Upload photos and supporting documents into the grant portal
• Generate system reports and notices

The proposed system scope will create functions for the grantee of an awarded project to allow user monitoring and a grantee section for equipment and real estate.

The proposed system will create new functions for environmental trust staff to perform the following actions:

• View details entered by the inspection officer for inspections
• Send reminders for activities to be completed through the system
• Create reports of activities
• Add required activities to the schedule of activities
• Monitor the status of the required activities - completed or are overdue

The Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) is a tribal college chartered by two sovereign nations: The Isanti Dakota (Santee) and the Umonhon (Omaha). The current scheduling method is a two-part manual entry process with no database. The project's objective is to develop automated course scheduling software to be integrated with existing in-house systems Empower and Cisco VTC Scheduler with automatic updates across all three platforms. The main goals are:

• Automatically populate course offerings based on a two-year course rotation.
• Frontload the courses tied to the faculty qualified to teach them.
• Utilize scheduling preferences based on the availability of faculty throughout the week.
• Collect data on enrollment based on days/times/modalities that the course is offered to analyze future course offerings.

Nebraska Innovation Studio (NIS)’s project is to build a mobile app that will serve as a customer relationship management system (CRM). The app will integrate with member information on the website and automate the manual membership tracking and daily usage processes, currently done on paper.

NIS is a 16,000 sq ft, membership-based makerspace on Innovation Campus. Memberships start on whatever day a member signs up or renews their membership. Members have access to all the equipment and training is required on most equipment prior to use.

The app will allow members to sign in and receive notifications for reservations, training, and membership renewal. They will also receive "blast" notifications meant for all active members.

Know Your Well (KYW) is a project started at the University of Nebraska that engages high school students and teachers in sampling and testing groundwater quality. About 160 students from 19 schools participated in KYW Phase 1 from 2017 to 2019. A smaller project (Phase II) is underway involving 5 schools in the Bazile Groundwater Management Area in northeast Nebraska and is expected to finish in 2022. Through KYW, students are trained in well construction, features affecting well water quality, and how to collect and test samples. While sampling, students use a KYW iPhone App to record well coordinates, land use, and other relevant features for up to 20 wells within 50 miles around their school, laying the groundwork for understanding groundwater vulnerability. Adding an Android-based KYW-III App will offer students another mechanism to automate, manage and verify data collected by users.

The long-term goal is to build a sustainable youth education well water program by extending the scope of previous KYW projects with an NRD-led program supported by the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL) and Kearney (UNK), involving up to 50 schools across Nebraska. Specific objectives are to:

• improve the website, strengthen links to NRD stakeholders, and develop an Android-based KYW-III App
• involve and train NRD staff in KYW-III program materials, and
• recruit and engage up to 50 school groups in sampling and testing of local domestic wells, helping students relate results to land use, well construction, and hydrogeology.

Cash Operations ACH Manager (known as COACH) is one component of the ScholarNet Suite, which is a suite of products that supports the private student loan industry by supporting processes such as loan management and certification, disbursement, and change transactions or refunds. COACH is used by Nelnet employees, specifically, the Cash and Lender Reporting staff to manage the transfer of student loan funds to and from external business partners (both private loan lenders and higher education institutions) using Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfers.

Currently, COACH is a Java application using outdated Spring and RichFaces libraries. The goal of this project is to rewrite the application to modernize the technology stack and improve the user interface. The goal is a modern version of COACH to be a Spring Boot backend application with an Angular frontend. With future plans to migrate this application to a cloud-hosted solution, and the application should be set up to run in a container.

The NRC Production Support Group (PSG) regularly receives requests to modify Customer Data. This happens for a variety of reasons: Physical location changes, mergers, acquisitions, customer error, etc. Production database updates are currently manual. This project will be to build a new application to automate the process. The app will also ensure accurate and secure updates, thus protecting the client's PHI.

The application will serve as the underlying architecture upon which future tooling to support the PSG team’s needs will be built. To be successful, the UNL team will have to work with a variety of databases and web-focused programming languages to build tools that are easy to use, consistent, secure, and expandable. The amount of data handled by this application will be quite large and scaling/performance concerns will have to be considered.

OrderEZ is an international food and beverage distributor that built its own distribution software and is proposing developing a fully integrated operations management platform for Outlets making industry adoption easy, integrating with customers’ POS and accounting systems, and enabling them to leverage those ancillary platforms as marketing and partnership channels to take advantage of a growing network. OrderEZ recently acquired a competitor, (www.FoodRazor.com), that focuses on automated accounts payable, procurement, and reporting. The plan is to incorporate the functionality of FoodRazor into OrderEZ’s existing infrastructure.

Key pillars of the project’s vision for the product are the following:

• Procurement: Schedule and send orders, utilize approval workflows, and receive goods on one platform.
• Inventory management: Stocktake, item tracking, and variance reporting.
• Automated accounts payable: Move from order to general ledger without data entry.
• Point-of-sale integration: Integrated sales and costing reporting and forecast ordering based on consumption.
• Embedded Finance: Complete the procure-to-pay cycle with ACH and credit card payment options and eventually expand into offering credit facilities (through financial service partnerships).
• Restaurant management dashboard: Deliver real-time insight into the health of outlet operations.

The Shyft Solutions’ Weather Exchange (WxChange) enables individual consumers and businesses of all sizes to make quick, informed decisions based on the weather conditions. There are four primary problems that users currently face when it comes to weather data:

• There is more data available than they know what to do with and/or how to access
• The data formats are not easy to work with if you are not familiar with scientific and meteorological software
• Most existing weather products are stand-alone applications that do not integrate data into their operational tools
• The most widely available data is not tailored to any specific use case and requires a lot of parsing and analysis to add value to a user or business

While many weather applications provide generic 5-day forecasts via a zip code or city name, the WxChange API allows precision to retrieve only the requested parameters and conditions for any latitude, longitude, elevation, and time across the globe to provide a highly accurate picture of the weather. For smaller businesses without their own software solutions, the WxChange can send custom reports detailing impacts on their operations via e-mail or SMS or host lightweight applications in a business portal. Additionally, for users looking to integrate the API into their own applications, the intention is to offer a variety of open-source SDKs that can be used to easily integrate data into common components.

Currently, the Weather Data API is functional in a beta state. This project team will build out an asset database and a single-page application for the business portal, allowing customers to store resources and activities related to their operations with specific weather criteria.

Tyler Technologies (formerly known as NIC Nebraska) is a software development firm focused solely on Nebraska state and local government, serving partners. NIC Nebraska has launched and supported over 2,000 service installations and over 200 unique applications. The applications are focused on streamlining interactions between citizens and government. There is a dedicated support team for partners and system users that manage inquiries across services. Currently, partners submit support tickets through the website “partner page.” The current solution automatically transfers the request to Jira, the project management platform. Partners can only select predetermined fields, resulting in a lack of detail for support, nor does the system email confirmation to the ticket submitter.

The solution is to create an easy-to-use partner portal that would allow a user to submit support requests. This would integrate with the Jira project management platform using preexisting APIs. The system would return an automated email confirmation to the submitter. In a future iteration, there should be a reporting view, or “dashboard,” for partners to see open and closed requests.

The application of Pesticides is a widely adopted practice within modern agriculture; however, this poses a significant health risk to farm workers and crop advisors. Regulations and product use restrictions, enforced by the United States Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), require a multitude of documentation and reporting procedures focused on protecting agricultural workers and resources. Pesticides can cause long-term human health effects or fatality from a single exposure, costing $200 million dollars annually. Safety standards require documentation, which currently relies on antiquated data collection and complex communication systems, putting little emphasis on notification timeliness. The required information consists of products used, rates of application, field locations, date, and time of application, and re-entry interval (REI) expiration.

The objective is to reduce the risk of pesticide exposure for all farm workers and crop advisors, by utilizing technological automation processes to reduce the number of links within the communication system. This will be done through the collection of pesticide application information within a cloud-based data storage system, updating it in near real-time, and providing accessibility to the information from any location with cellular or internet connectivity. This will allow applicators to quickly upload pesticide application information, permitting accessibility for field workers and crop scouts. Users will log in to their account and locate application specifics, seamlessly sharing pesticide application information across multiple platforms. By utilizing wireless data transfer technology and available industry leader’s software application programming interfaces (API’s), the development and implementation of third-party applications to meet industry needs will be met.

The project is to develop a boat that can assist an unmanned aerial system (UAS) in deploying and recovering underwater sensors. The UAS will be able to drop the boats and underwater sensors into the water. The focus of this work will be to develop the electro-mechanical systems to enable the boat to recover the underwater sensor and then allow the UAS to recover the sensor and boat combination. This will allow the multi-robot system to monitor both above and below the water in difficult environments. The focus of the monitoring system will be to observe the impact of the changing habitat of beavers in the arctic areas. As beavers build dams in the arctic, this melts the surrounding permafrost, which potentially accelerates the changes to the ecosystem in the area and causes significant changes to the landscape. The NIMBUS Lab has extensive experience in developing UAS deployment systems, and underwater sensor nodes, and aims to leverage the open source “Duckiepond” boats as the basis for this project. This project will require designing and evaluating the electro-mechanical system and software for the boat and sensor node collecting system. Once the system is functional and tested, the goal is to integrate it with a drone to evaluate in the field.

This project will expand on the current Husker STEM VR app created last year. The Husker STEM VR project is an outreach/recruitment app that was built for the Oculus Quest. Students built a virtual reality Oculus Quest app for UNL's School of Computing and College of Engineering to encourage STEM outreach. This app helps make learning fun by creating a virtual reality app designed to create an engaging learning environment. Additionally, there can be promotion of more diversity in STEM by creating an educational environment that promotes inclusiveness.

The first year was able to successfully create the basic app built around Memorial Stadium and implements educational activities for degrees in the School of Computing (CS, SE, and CE). This year, the app needs to be extended to add information and educational activities/capabilities for prospective students to explore other STEM degrees within the College of Engineering. For instance: Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Architectural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Biological Systems Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.

This project will expand on the current Husker Scope app created last year. The Husker Scope app is an all-in-one cross-platform (iOS, Android, and Web App) application that implements a Dual Channel Function Generator, AM/FM Modulator, and Single Channel Oscilloscope functionality for use within UNL engineering courses and around the world.

The first-year students were able to successfully create the basic app functionality and the goal is to develop it further by creating a hardware interface to enable two-channel inputs for the Oscilloscope, enable functionality outside the normal audio range, as well as adding in a Spectrum Analyzer and Logic Analyzer functionality into the app.

This project is regarding a hardware-assisted machine learning accelerator using FPGA and/or NVIDIA Jetson boards. The board(s) can capture inputs by a connected camera, or they can read them as an input file. Students can focus on developing (1) a framework to analyze security issues of quantized neural networks and/or (2) a framework to implement efficiently distributed learning (federated learning) on several FPGAs/Jetson boards.

The final deliverable should consist of:

• a software-based framework to analyze the security vulnerability of neural network models
• connecting 3-5 devices (FPGAs/Jetsons) that implement a larger and more complex neural network using distributed (federated) learning. Both projects are software/hardware co-design implementations, where programming and hardware knowledge are essential to smooth the integration process.

The team may partition the work into at least two tracks that should be coordinated but can operate in parallel. One part of the project should be the implementation of neural networks on FPGAs. Since the target boards are resource-limited, this task includes software and/or hardware approaches to compress the model to map it to the hardware. The same scenario exists for the Jetson with the difference that it needs CUDA programming rather than HDL (VHDL, Verilog) experience. Depending on the members of the team and their CE/EE experience, this task will continue to either the security or efficiency track. Support will be there for the team in making those choices.

Running Robot variation of The Running Man Game: Model cars with transmitters and receivers for tagging cars, live scoring system, applications for users and for observers.

RoboLaserTag will be a blend of Laser Tag-style games. Laser Tag 2023 is a modern version of Laser Tag-style games updated using modern technology and Robot Combat-style games using modern technology. The project will incorporate several types of design tasks: mixed-signal circuit design; embedded software; distributed computing and mobile systems. Safety will be paramount, and all designs will be discussed with the campus police and LPD.

The game will be played using remote-controlled and/or semi-autonomous “battle bots.” Rather than inflicting physical damage (perhaps physical contact results in a penalty?), the robots shoot focused infrared light or possibly sub-milliwatt lasers at targets (photodetectors) on opposing robots. The “guns” will encode their ID into their shots to register who made a given hit. RF4CE software can be used to manage the guns and targets. The robots will also connect by WiFi to a game management system that provides real-time scoring, purchase of ammunition, weapon upgrades, med kits, armor, and other role-playing game features.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States. One person dies every 36 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease. About 659,000 people in the United States die from heart disease each year—that's 1 in every 4 deaths. Heart disease costs the United States about $363 billion each year from 2016 to 2017 (https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm , 2022).

The goal of this project is to develop an Immersive Virtual Reality Escape Room that focuses on cardiovascular disease to educate nursing students and professional nurses. The room will focus on care for Myocardial Infarction, Heart Failure, Stroke, and Cardiac Arrest.

Small, rural, and critical access hospitals have historically been under-resourced in their infection prevention and control (IPC) programs. The team seeks to improve access to subject-matter experts who can provide assessment and consultation to strengthen IPC practices in these settings. The project team will build an online software application to provide timely and comprehensive consultative services for small and rural hospitals across the nation. The app should allow a specialist at the hospital in Omaha, Nebraska to move a camera around without disrupting anyone else on a call. The application should accommodate multiple people logged in on the same call utilizing the software. The app should allow the following:

• Picture-in-picture or ability to add in the secondary stream
• Each individual consultant to independently move the application without affecting the other consultants' views (e.g., consultant to move around their own screen live in the 360 streams without moving the camera on site)
• Two-way communication
• Zoom-in capabilities
• Virtual-Reality Viewable
• Annotation
• Snapshot abilities
• Facial recognition and ability to blur faces for PHI privacy
• Low latency transmitting to a Desktop and a Virtual Reality headset across the country
• Use of a 360-degree camera and manipulation or write code to an existing 360 camera. There will also be a need to collaborate with the industry partners who are working on developing similar applications or are already working in this space.

Every year the USDA-NRCS, Nebraska receives and processes approximately 3000 requests for wetland determinations on private agricultural lands. These determinations are critical to both producers’ conservation compliance objectives (to be eligible for Farm Bill programs) as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) mandate to protect wetlands across the United States. In 2018, Nebraska NRCS address this challenge by 1) combining all compliance staff into one central team and 2) mandating that all preliminary determinations be performed remotely using offsite techniques, better data, and more technology. Now the state’s 3000 annual requests are handled by a team of just 7-10 wetland biologists and soil scientists.

The project goal is to create a comprehensive, geospatial application to delineate, attribute, and finalize certified wetland determinations to support the National Food Security Act Manual and Food Security Act Conservation Compliance Program. It involves geospatial data editing and attributes population, geodatabase management, and document creation and storage. Additionally, data hosting alternatives, including the ESRI Enterprise file sharing system, should be utilized.

Werner Enterprises provides a mobile app, created by Senior Design students last year, to its Drivers called Drive Werner Pro (DWP). DWP is a convenient app for Drivers to access essential information when away from their trucks, such as job information, pay, driving opportunities, eLearning, and more. DWP is one of the main tools drivers use to access essential information about Werner; however, the app does not have a flexible medium to communicate effectively with Drivers.

The scope of this project is two-fold:

• Provide a flexible messaging and notification mechanism on DWP for Drivers
• Provide an interface for office associates to customize driver messaging (user-specific, time-based, document inclusion, navigation, etc.).

The goal of this solution is to reduce service tickets and development time for Werner engineering teams to update content on the app, improve engagement of drivers, reduce support tickets from drivers and decrease time to communicate.