Scholars Symposium 2024: Engineering & Computer Science

Multi-Material Quasi-Zero Stiffness Vibration Isolators

by Gabriel Hulbert (Undergraduate), Ava Merrifield (Undergraduate), Aidan Pomles (Undergraduate), and Luke Fredette (Faculty)

Vibration-generating machines are ubiquitous in modern life, and it is often desirable to prevent the vibrations from being transmitted through the machine’s supports to protect either the supported object or nearby structures and equipment from excess shaking. A mounting system with a low stiffness is generally required to isolate a vibration source or receiver. Optimal isolation occurs by disconnecting the path altogether, resulting in zero stiffness, but this is not typically practical since the machine still needs to be supported. Quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) describes a property of a connection point where the stiffness is approximately zero at an operating point but becomes high if the object moves away from that point. This enables a mount to secure a vibrating object relatively in place while substantially reducing the vibrations transmitted through the mounts, and the mechanism works whether it is the base or the supported object that is vibrating. This project is seeking to extend prior work on a QZS mount concept that relies on large deformations of elastomeric beams to enhance its practicality and suitability for a variety of applications. The specific goals of this project are to evaluate several materials as used in the mounts, explore manufacturing issues with casting and 3D printing processes, apply a multi-material design concept to increase the strength of a mount without losing its QZS properties, and apply the mount concept to a multi-mount system. Physical mechanical testing of various elastomeric materials is used to develop a nonlinear, hyperelastic material characterization for finite element (FE) simulations in both design and analysis of QZS mounts. Mechanical testing of individual mounts and mount systems demonstrates proof of concept and validates the existence of QZS properties seen in FE simulations for both multi-material and single-material mounts. Multi-axis stiffness properties are also evaluated in simulation and measurement for system design purposes, and dynamic testing is presented to characterize the damping in QZS isolation.

George Mueller Video Game CS Senior Design

by Mason Beale (Undergraduate), Christopher LaFave (Undergraduate), Jackson Adams (Undergraduate)

"Mr. Mueller's Grand Experiment" is an interactive story driven experience designed to enrich player's lives with the story of someone who had great faith in God, while giving them fun choices and multiple endings. Many of their choices can lead them down the wrong paths, just like in real life. This has been a collaborative effort for our senior design capstone course, and uses the Unity 3d game engine, under direction from an overseas missionary as part of his ongoing work in spreading the Gospel, and will eventually publish the game on online store, Steam.

Sketchy Driver

by David Pyo (Undergraduate), Joshua Thomas (Undergraduate), Spencer Riffle (Undergraduate), Jacob Flanigan (Undergraduate)

Cedarville’s cyber operations program requires students to learn how to interact with drivers in its Linux Systems Programming class. Historically, the class required students to complete a homework assignment in which they complete a driver for a virtual Linux-based device. However, this assignment proved both unideal (as a virtual device) and needlessly complex for its scope. Our team’s goal was to develop a custom physical device and corresponding assignment to replace the previous device driver assignment. Our design criteria was as follows: a fun and simple physical device to interact with, the ability to use this device with a cloud-based virtual machine, an interactive driver, and a low manufacturing cost. In terms of manufacturing cost, our goal was to keep a reasonable cost for a set of roughly 20 units. We decided to pursue an ESP32-S2 solution, with the goal of creating a USB Vendor-type device that could be easily passed through to a cloud VM with minimal user interaction. In an effort to create both a fun and focused assignment, we set developmental efforts on an Etch-a-sketch type device. Our device consists of 4 main components: hardware, firmware, the device driver, and client-side software. We constructed a physical shell for the device using 3D printing, developed firmware to interact with the two integrated rotary encoders, created a driver to interface the device with the client, and built a software client program to display functionality of the device to the students. Our assignment aspect focused on the device driver. We took our functioning device driver and pulled out pieces that we desired students to learn. Given the entire assignment, students should be able to understand how device drivers function, in how they interact with the physical device and the rest of the system itself.

Exploring a Smart Home Smoke Detector

by Brent Whitley (Undergraduate), Campbell Stahlman (Undergraduate), Luke Carpenter (Undergraduate)

Common household devices have become packed with technology including microphones, cameras, and even internet connectivity. While this technology provides numerous benefits, many consumers have concerns about the security and potential exploitation of these devices. Our team was provided with a smart home smoke detector by Ceaser Creek Software, our project sponsor. The team at CCSW had already gained access to the device's memory and the ability to inject/execute custom code. Our team was tasked with reverse engineering the smoke detector in order to understand how the device works. Specifically, our team has worked to gain access to the microphone, record audio data, and send that information over the network. Our team performed static analysis of the device's memory, dynamic analysis of running tasks, and ran custom code on the device. We successfully managed to create new tasks, keep the device awake while running code, and view data recorded by the microphone during a self-test. We are currently working to manually record audio and export that data over the network.

Segmentation Analysis of CT Scans for Determining Mass Properties of the Head and Cervical Spine Center of Rotation

by Kimiye Wenger (Undergraduate), Thaddeus Krueger (Undergraduate), Josiah Zurick (Undergraduate), Timothy L. Norman (Faculty), Jennifer J. Whitestone  (STI-TEC) and Christopher B. Albery

Introduction: Advancements in helmet mounted technology have greatly increased pilots’ capabilities. However, these additions move the helmet’s center-of-gravity (CG) forward, away from the pilot’s head CG, causing stress on the neck muscles due to the static and dynamic moment resulting from flight conditions including high accelerations. For future study of risks associated with modifications to the helmet and for endeavors to customize helmets to pilots’ head CGs, it would be beneficial to have accurate methods for determining a pilot’s head mass properties. Additionally, the ability to reference these mass properties to a center of rotation (COR) determined from external anatomical landmarks would aid these studies and potentially simplify biodynamics simulations in other contexts. The objectives of this study were threefold: (1) to provide verification for the method of using segmentation analysis on CT scans to determine the head’s mass properties; (2) to compare segmentation analysis methods with differing assumptions concerning the density of bone tissue; and (3) to identify an approximate upper cervical spine COR location referencing only commonly used external anatomical landmarks.

Methods: This study used a method of segmentation analysis on CT scans of cadavers by using segmentation software to separate each head into chosen tissue types and utilizing SolidWorks (Dassault Systèmes Concord, Massachusetts) to apply densities and perform mass property calculations. This study employed four methods for assigning density to the skull: (1) applying a cortical bone density throughout, (2) applying a composite density, using the skull’s volumetric distribution of cortical and trabecular bone, (3) using a composite density from an average bone tissue type volumetric distribution for the skulls, and (4) segmenting and applying density to trabecular and cortical tissues separately. Data from sixteen cadaver subjects were used in the first three methods with only eight in the fourth method. This study collected mass properties including weight, volume, and CG location for the four methods of segmentation. A Tukey-Kramer statistical analysis was performed to compare these methods to experimentally collected mass properties. To fulfill the third objective, a geometrically approximated occipital condyle (OC) centroid location was compared to a location offset by a constant distance from the Frankfurt coordinate system using a Tukey-Kramer analysis with 17 head specimens. Using another Tukey-Kramer analysis on data from Chancey et al. 2007, the geometrically approximated OC centroid location (data from 10 head specimens) was compared to the upper cervical spine COR (data from 14 specimens).

Results: In the segmentation analysis, methods 2, 3, and 4 were not significantly different from the experimental results. However, this study found that the method of applying cortical density to all the skull resulted in marginally significant (p=0.0578) results, despite being the method employed by past studies using segmentation analysis on CT scans. These results are supported by the fact that this study also found the volumetric distribution of trabecular vs. cortical bone is almost 50/50 within the skull. From these results, it is clear that segmentation analysis is an accurate method for determining the head’s mass properties, but trabecular bone within the skull must be considered. No significant difference was found between the approximated OC centroid location and the location found from the Frankfurt coordinate system (X-direction: p = 0.9965, Y-direction: p = 0.9949, Z-direction: p = 0.9989). No significant difference was found between the upper cervical spine COR and the approximated OC centroid location (X-direction: p = 0.9889, Z-direction: p = 0.8046). These results show that in the X- and Z-directions it is possible to identify an approximate upper cervical spine COR location using only the external anatomical landmarks that define the Frankfurt coordinate system. This fact may simplify future biodynamics simulations.

Speculo: an Internet Resource Replicator

by Samuel DeCook (Undergraduate), Alvin Solomon (Undergraduate), Matthew Jacobs (Undergraduate)

When you are developing cyber software, development is frequently done in a secure network disconnected from the internet for security reasons. However, software developers still need easy access to resources from the internet. Speculo exists to make that process uniform and easy by providing a way for users to "request" resources, "sync" them, and when transferred to a secure network, "serve" them such that users can access those resources like they were connected to the internet.

Pillars of Light: A 1st-Person Puzzle Game

by Donald Osborn (Undergraduate), Ian Hubble (Undergraduate), Jackson Isenhower (Undergraduate)

This symposium poster aims to share insights in developing a 1st-person puzzle game created in Unreal Engine 5. The game, titled “Pillars of Light,” lets players explore various level designs and engage in puzzles to piece together the new world around them.

This poster showcases how the project team utilized Unreal Engine 5’s multitude of features, including but not limited to the game engine’s Blueprint Visual Scripting system in addition to the level design features of the game, highlighting Unreal Engine 5’s toolset for environment creation, object interactivity, and challenging puzzles for enhancing the player’s gaming experience.

This development process will be explored in more detail, describing various technical challenges the team encountered, and solutions brainstormed and utilized for the project. This may include player controls and how they help the player better interact with the digital environment around them.

Attendees will gain insights regarding the creative process, from the initial vision of the game to the tangible implementation. This emphasizes the necessity in balancing concepts and implementations for a user-friendly experience, inspiring fellow game developers and enthusiasts to not only experiment with Unreal Engine 5, but also leverage this powerful engine to create entertainment content themselves.

Project TANG

by Peter Larson (Undergraduate), Andrew Davis (Undergraduate), Michael White (Undergraduate), and Seth Hamman (Faculty)

Cryptic Vector, a local DoD contractor, approached Cedarville with a persistent problem their developers face. When creating effective cyber tools in defense contexts, there must be a representative network to test them against. To instantiate the needed architecture, there are two current solutions. First, one can bring in the physical hardware necessary to test a tool against. However, this presents multiple challenges. Ensuring the architecture is in a clean state prior to the test is extremely difficult. In addition, only one individual can test against the hardware at any given time. With multi-million-dollar projects, this method quickly becomes unrealistic. The second option is to instantiate virtual hardware as needed. This is the ideal solution that Cryptic Vector currently uses. Developers use hypervisor APIs to create their own networks and customized VMs. However, this lacks uniformity between various hypervisors and is not portable to different networks or projects. Thus, enters Project TANG. The Testing Architecture Network Generator (TANG), is a cost-effective solution that deconflicts usage, allows portability, and provides vast scalability. We utilize three primary tools, in cohort, to deliver a leading-edge product: Kubernetes, KubeVirt, and GitLab. Kubernetes is an open-source platform used to automate deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. KubeVirt is a tool capable of containerizing existing virtual machines which allows them to be run within a Kubernetes architecture. Finally, GitLab provides a DevSecOps framework where development and testing are synonymous. When a developer commits a change to their code base, TANG initiates a series of events. Automatically, customized virtual machines and a tailored network are created within a Kubernetes Cluster. What normally takes hours of detail-oriented labor is completed in mere minutes. Specific test scripts are run on the corresponding architecture and returned to the developer in GitLab. The freshly generated architecture is then uninstantiated and resources returned. Within a short time, the developer has feedback pertaining to the success or failure of their code. Project TANG, through generating a customized virtual architecture and automatic testing, seeks to save developers time, resources, and assist all stakeholders in the creation of secure, reliable, and effective cyber tools.

Multi-Modal Translation Tool

by Lainy Humes (Undergraduate), Josiah Carpenter (Undergraduate), Josiah Harvey (Undergraduate), Brandon Barker (Undergraduate)

In regions worldwide, a critical shortage persists in high-quality evangelistic, discipleship, and training materials in indigenous languages. This gap emphasizes the urgent need to translate the Bible into these heart languages, ensuring broad understanding of the gospel. Yet, the challenge extends beyond translation; creating supplementary documents in these languages is equally crucial for sustaining discipleship. Existing translation tools face significant hurdles. Manual translation is costly and time-consuming, while conventional machine translation struggles with the vast linguistic diversity of over 7,000 languages globally. In response, the Multimodal Translation Tool (MuTT) team is committed to devising a comprehensive solution. A notable feature of our platform is the translation of Bible verses. Acknowledging their significance, we've implemented a specialized feature to isolate them, ensuring accuracy across diverse linguistic contexts through user-validated positions. Our approach begins with a sophisticated translation process facilitated by an intuitive user interface. Leveraging Seamless-MT4, our backend enables seamless translation across a wide array of languages, with advanced text-to-speech and speech-to-text functionalities, catering specifically to primarily spoken languages. Importantly, our translation process preserves document integrity, including bold formatting, image placement, and unique fonts tailored to each linguistic context. This fidelity is ensured through rigorous backend parsing using Python scripting. Our user interface, meticulously crafted with React, empowers missionaries and linguists to easily upload, translate, and disseminate documents while providing insights into translation progress. Designed for varying technical proficiencies, it democratizes access to critical translation resources. Our solution is developed at a low cost for our partner organization, Live Global, demonstrating our commitment to inclusivity and accessibility in spreading the gospel message worldwide. Through a diverse array of resources, we've engineered a comprehensive solution to address the challenge of providing discipleship materials in heart languages, fostering inclusivity and accessibility in gospel dissemination.

Homework Muffin Mobile App

by Stephen Venable (Undergraduate), Kobe Couvion (Undergraduate), Samuel Marshall (Undergraduate)

Homework Muffin Mobile is a mobile app designed to help students manage their time and classroom assignments in one convenient location. This management centers around the idea of “tasks,” which can be course-imported assignments or self-created goals. Students can add tasks to their profile, view a list of all their tasks with helpful filters to guide their focus and choose which ones to work on using a Pomodoro timer to optimize their efforts. On completion of an uninterrupted timer, students are rewarded with Muffins: an in-app currency used for purchasing power-ups like streak freezes or cosmetics to make their profile stand out. This application is built on the React Native Framework using TypeScript. The backend server is managed by Homework Muffin Web, which provides the application with API calls to the shared Prisma database that the mobile app can use with TypeScript fetch requests. The provided API allows the mobile app to retrieve, create, edit, and delete tasks associated with students. The application authenticates with the backend using a 3rd-party service called Auth0, which allows users to log in via username/password or a preferred social site (e.g. Google). Behind the scenes, this authentication process involves trading a user’s credentials for an Auth0 (bearer) token that can then be passed with API calls to verify the legitimacy of the data request.

Next Level Web Development

by Spencer Bills (Undergraduate), Sebastian Neiswager (Undergraduate), Kurt Campbell (Undergraduate), Andrew McGraw (Undergraduate)

Next.js has significantly contributed to the evolution of web application architecture by offering a solution for building performant, user-friendly web applications. This framework seamlessly integrates various aspects of web development, providing developers with a streamlined approach to crafting sophisticated web architectures. Central to the Next.js architecture are the advanced routing mechanisms, server-side rendering (SSR), client-side rendering (CSR), caching strategies, server actions, and data revalidation techniques, which enhances the application's performance, scalability, and developer experience. Next.js distinguishes itself with multiple types of rendering for web pages. SSR in Next.js allows for the pre-rendering of pages on the server, which can significantly improve the initial load time, by serving fully-rendered (hydrated) HTML to the client. Conversely, CSR in Next.js enhances interactivity and reduces server load by rendering components directly in the browser, thus offering a flexible approach to balancing performance and user experience. Next.js also offers incremental static regeneration (ISR) for rendering content at build-time rather than regenerating on every request. The framework introduces compositional patterns, leveraging React's composability to enable the creation of complex user interfaces from interlaced server components and client components. This modularity fosters reuse and testing, streamlining the development process. Next.js also features an "unstable cache" API for experimental caching strategies, aiming to optimize time to first byte (TTFB) and time to interactive (TTI). Furthermore, Next.js introduces server actions for handling data fetching, mutations, and server-side logic, encapsulating backend functionality directly within the framework. This integration streamlines the process of building interactive applications. Coupled with revalidation strategies, which allow for efficient data fetching, caching, and incremental static regeneration, Next.js can keep applications up to date with minimal server runtime.

Password-less Authentication New Innovations

by Josiah Harvey (Undergraduate)

I have been passionate about passwordless for a long time. they once were sufficient to secure systems of high priority however in recent years there have been too many examples of their shortcomings. Passwordless authentication methods take security out of the hands of the password creator and use alternatives like digital keys, physical keys, and biometrics. There is much recent progress in this field that I believe people should be informed about.

Notis

by Joshua Lees (Undergraduate), Luke Lyall (Undergraduate), Samuel Davis (Undergraduate), Samuel Katon (Undergraduate)

Our project is a private messenger (Notis) that makes use of a relatively new (a few years old) internet communication protocol called Nostr. Nostr is a decentralized protocol, meaning it is not controlled by any one parent company. A series of contributors work on keeping it afloat by maintaining relays all around the world. Relays allow for messages to be sent and received in a fast and secure way. We use this protocol it to create a private messenger with built-in login, contacts, and QR code key sharing. Our poster will capture all of the core fundamental ideas of our app, including encryption, internet communication, secure messaging, and public/private key pairs.

Reach Beyond Web App

by Myles Weaver (Undergraduate), Noah Walker (Undergraduate), Silas Ogren (Undergraduate), Abagail Clark (Undergraduate)

For our senior design project, our team is making a web application for a real-world client: a ministry called Reach Beyond that provides missionaries across the world with financial aid. The purpose of this project is to provide a centralized tool that facilitates the process of requesting and recording financial grants and administering their approval, streamlining their current workflow. It will be used internationally so there will be an emphasis on security, privacy, and usability. Our project involves developing a cloud-hosted web application. All of the resources used will be hosted on Microsoft Azure including the web app, SQL database, storage container, authentication system, and API. The project is built on the .NET Blazor framework and uses the MudBlazor library for the UI components. We access the SQL database using a micro-ORM called Dapper, a lightweight alternative to Entity Framework's MVC model. We also use a BLOB storage container to host files uploaded by the users. Users will login to our website through Azure's B2C system, which manages user authentication and user information. The website's interactions with the database are managed through our API, also written using the Blazor framework.

Reverse Engineering Google Nest Protect

by Brooke Ackley (Undergraduate), Ben Lemoreaux (Undergraduate), Jonathon Weinhold (Undergraduate)

Our team has done vulnerability research on the Google Nest. The Google Nest is a smoke detector that has multiple sensors, and our goal is to gather information on the humidity & temperature sensor. This research is important to help further security on the Google Nest. Reverse engineering allowed us to discover which functions in the Google Nest code relate to sensors. There are two processors, the K24 and K16, that are on the Google Nest that were investigated. We looked at two communication protocols, I2C and SPI, between the K24, K16 and sensors. From the sensor information we could write code to take over a function to perform our own functionality. Our results will indicate that sensor information can be displayed from the Google Nest which shows a vulnerability.

EWS Zimbabwe

by Brianna Pacecca (Undergraduate), Taylor Beigle (Undergraduate), Paul Manring (Undergraduate), Calvin Vondracek (Undergraduate), Annabelle Novak (Undergraduate)

There is a small hospital in Zimbabwe that receives all of its water from a nearby river. There is currently a water treatment plant in place that utilizes one large filter. If that filter breaks or clogs then the entire plant shuts down and the hospital is left with no water for the duration of the repairs. This project is about creating a solution that allows the hospital to continue to receive water even if there is an issue with the filter. The solution is to create ten smaller filters instead of one giant one to handle the same amount of flow. The result is that if one or two filters are out of commission then the other eight can continue to function as normal and the hospital never has to go without water. The goal of this project is to validate the new design idea and then implement it in Zimbabwe. To do so, the team needs to recreate the water treatment plant here in the university lab exactly how it currently is in Zimbabwe, while only changing one variable, the filtration system. The team has taken special precautions to only use materials in the new design that will be readily available in Zimbabwe. All of the plumbing is done with PVC tubes and the filter media is from the river near the hospital. If this new design plan functions properly, this system will be installed for the hospital in the summer of 2024.