Software Project Proposals

Sample Software Project Proposals

Overview

Innovative Technical Knowledge Database/GUI

The industry leader in high performance industrial digital printing hardware, we maintain a core R&D engineering group in Lebanon, NH. This group manages multiple concurrent product development and technology exploration projects. The proposed project would create the architecture and process for an integrated, graphically organized technical knowledge database and manage the pilot implementation of this system. Utilizing Web 2.0 tools, it must combine database multi-user flexibility and search abilities with an intuitive graphical interface.

Goals

The overall goal is to migrate technical information from static repositories to a dynamic environment where test plans, project activities, scientific problem solving and product planning ideas are shared and manipulated in a real time network environment. Engineers, managers and technicians would use this environment for all daily technical interaction sharing varying levels of read/write access. If designed and implemented properly, the technical knowledge base would organically grow as a densely linked, topically comprehensible entity.

A crucial addition to any available commercial package, even if one does exist that meets most specifications, will be the design of an architecture that facilitates technical communication and physics based problem solving to match the personality of this dynamic R&D group.

Deliverables

• Work with potential users to define scope, specifications and desired features.
• Review existing mind mapping and database interface software packages, evaluate capabilities and present the options, along with customization possibilities, to key decision makers.
• Innovate the knowledge base software architecture in conversation with beta users.
• Implement, in conjunction with the IT department, customizing a commercial product and/or creating new graphical input and output algorithms and database designs.
• Train, interact with pilot users, specify, debug, and make recommendations for next phase.

Knowledge Areas Needed for Project

• Software engineering
• Product design
• Project management
• Modeling and optimization

Proprietary Information and Confidentiality Requirements

• Confidentiality required for sponsor-provided information
• Intellectual property ownership rights retained by sponsor
• Sponsor accepts responsibility to discuss IP ownership directly with the student project team and project advisor

System to Track Athletes's Position Using Video

Overview

Trak Performance software allows a user to track where an athlete or official (hereafter will just refer to players) moves around a field/rink/court (field for short), thereby providing tactical information on how the player uses the field, and their velocity (which translates into work rate), both of great interest to coaches. The Trak Performance software assists the user in tracking players, one player at a time, by providing a diagram of the field on screen, and recording the user's mouse movements as the user follows the player's movements around the field, watching a separate video. The user can also setup hot keys to hit when various events occur, like a shot. More information on Trak Performance can be found here.

There are systems that track player movements, such as ProZone, but they require a major, permanent system installation at the stadium, and cost on the order of $10,000/game and require sending the video out to a processing center.

When we saw a demonstration of ProQueSys, it seemed that the technique used in the goldfish example could potentially be applied to the problem of tracking players as they moved around a field.

Goals

To determine the feasibility and, if feasible, the computational requirements to semi-automatically track entire team(s) of athletes as they move about a field using a single camera angle and the ProQueSys software system. We define 'tracking' an athlete as knowing where they are on a field at every instance of time, thereby not only knowing their location, but thereby being able to calculate their velocity, and thus determine running speed, work rate etc.

Deliverables

• Familiarize with the ProQueSys (PQS) tracking platform.
• Create interfacing specifications.
• Develop tracking system using PQS tools—includes tracking players, tracking field boundaries as camera pans back and forth following the ball, registering players as they enter or leave the field.
• Tracking strategy may depend on using one or multiple PQS tracking instances to initially track the field boundaries. This way the tracking models can reasonably accurately determine the viewing angle of the camera, and feed this information back into the tracking models. Knowing approximate field boundaries improves the accuracy of player tracking.
• Second development stage will focus on producing one or more player tracking models. One model will be able to track dozens of players at once, since the ProQueSys core can apply the same model to multiple objects in the tracked environment. ProQueSys currently uses several image processing strategies, a selection of which will determine the best tracking performance, given the player models. Tracking targets include players, referee(s) and the ball.
• Test models on selected test video(s). We will pick a sport on which to focus all initial development, likely candidates are soccer and field hockey.
• Effectiveness evaluation will depend on human scoring of the resulting tracked players. Measures will include players missed, players mis-identified, system losing track of a player, or the system tracking a single player multiple times.
• Trak Performance software, which uses a manual tracking technique, may be used to provide current standard of accuracy for comparison with PQS models created in this project.
• Later in the project the focus will be on improving the human interaction with the tracking system to allow an operator to correct tracking mistakes and mix-ups.
• The team will deliver the results of their feasibility study, as well as all software, user interface, PQS models, etc.

Required Facilities

All development must be on the Macintosh OS X platform as that is how we deliver all of our software.

Knowledge Areas Needed for Project

• Software engineering

Proprietary Information and Confidentiality Requirements

• Confidentiality required for sponsor-provided information
• Intellectual property ownership rights retained by sponsor
• Sponsor accepts responsibility to discuss IP ownership directly with the student project team and project advisor