Undergraduate Research Day Projects
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/2212
Organized by the University of Houston Office of Undergraduate Research and Major Awards, Undergraduate Research Day is an annual event showcasing exceptional scholarship undertaken by the UH undergraduate community.
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Browsing Undergraduate Research Day Projects by Department "Architecture and Design, Gerald D. Hines College of"
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Item 3D Printed Limb Prosthesis(2022-04-14) Edquilang, DavidResearch and development of a 3D printed prosthetic arm which seeks to tackle the issues of high cost and discomfort associated with professionally-made prosthetics.Item Accelerated Odyssey: The impact of the Camera Obscura on perception, reflection, and environments and how contemplative design can respond to a thoughtful life.(2018-10-18) Martinez, DanielleThe camera obscura accelerated our ability to capture light, time, and environments. Through environmental analysis in material, light, and time, artistic examples throughout history have shaped the augmentation of the design. The result of this inquiry was a design that provides moments of reflection, pause, and contemplation in a formal spiritual space that dynamically changes over time.Item Adjustable Smart Limb Socket(2020-09-29) Bibikova, AnnaArtificial limbs can cost upwards of $100,000 but without a proper fit, it is difficult to wear them for even more than a few hours and may even cause further injury to the patient. In fact, 13.4% of amputees in third world countries end up abandoning their prosthetic due to discomfort. My goal for this project was to improve amputees’ quality of life by designing a transhumeral prosthesis socket to be as perfectly fit, breathable and user friendly as possible. For this project, I spent time conducting biomedical research about the anatomy of the upper arm and the various pressure points within the residual limb of transhumeral amputees, as well as material research on electroactive polymers and “artificial electric muscles” that contract and expand when exposed to a low voltage. I also did research on user experiences with existing sockets and the problems that are experienced. Through the SURF summer program I have developed a concept for a minimal , highly ventialted ,self adjusting prosthetic socket for transhumeral amputees that is able to conform in real time to the patient's arm depending on the activity being done. The Smart Socket uses sensors to measure pressure and determine arm position within the socket, in order for a low voltage electroactive polymer band to contact or release around the arm in real time.Item Assisting Children with Hand and Wrist Spasticity with 3D Printing and Elastic Materials(2022-04-14) Mortazavi, MohammadmehdiChildren with cerebral palsy often suffer from spasticity. Spasticity happens when muscles contract and expand involuntarily and there is no cure for this condition. There are treatment options however and for hand and wrist spasticity there are multiple spasticity gloves in the market but they are all for adults, are complicated, uncomfortable, and expensive. Therefore I attempted to design a spasticity glove for children that is affordable, comfortable, and easy to use.Item Auto Isolation: The Reshaping of Infrastructure, Society, and Space with Autonomous Cars(2017-10-12) Thomson, MeganThe car was a vital part of American society and identity. Traditionally, driving one signified one’s right of passage and allowed the user freedom and status. Cities have evolved around automobiles with freeways and parking lots dictating the spaces of human participation. According to theorist Jane Jacobs, this independence produced a detrimental result: social isolation. The development of autonomous vehicles presents a potential remedy to this problem via the decrease in spatial needs of cars. Autonomous vehicles liberate space to find new purpose devoted to people and public life. By examining various examples of human and car occupied urban space in Houston on multiple levels, along with the time and productivity lost in commutes, the impact of autonomous vehicles on the future development of cities may be seen. The autonomous vehicle disrupts the current norm of city growth, allowing people to rethink the future development of space in American cities. When the need for location based use as well as ownership is no longer required, car storage and maintenance can become centralized, freeing up valuable space for the occupation of humans. The application of this research proposes a design solution that addresses the liberated space in the city of Houston.Item Berlin Germany: The Disaster of WWII(2017-10-12) Zepeda, MichaelItem Body-Powered Prosthesis Design for a Patient with a Partial Hand Amputation(2022-04-14) Bhattacharya, Karina3D-printing technology allows designers to create customizable and functional prosthetics for amputee patients in need. This study explored the creation of 3D-printed prosthetic fingers that were specifically designed for a patient with a partial hand amputation. Since the patient’s remaining hand maintained a high degree of strength and wide range of motion, a body-powered prosthetic could enable the patient to move the prosthetic fingers with the rest of their hand. On-site visits with the patient and occupational therapist helped establish technical information such as finger measurements and current range of movement, details that were later used to design the prosthesis. The final design aimed to achieve basic grasps, appear near life-like, and be comfortably worn on the hand. 14 prototype iterations and physical models were 3D-printed and tested for durability and functionality. The final design of the prosthesis incorporated a four-bar linkage mechanism system that closed the fingers by flexing the back of the hand. It tailored to the specific needs of the patient and offered them the ability to perform basic functions such holding, grasping, and writing.Item Brisbane: The Great Floods(2017-10-12) Burciaga, RaymondItem Building Structures with a Swarm of Robots(2018-10-18) Ike, RhemaAdvances in construction automation have primarily focused on creating heavy machines to accomplish repetitive tasks. While this approach is valuable in an assembly-line context, it does not always translate well for the tight confines and dynamic nature of construction sites. To address the challenges of construction-site assembly, this project suggests an alternative technique that uses a fleet of smaller robots working collaboratively. Instead of using complex robot manipulators and simple building materials, we embed most of the complexity in the build modules. In our tests, we used cardstock that could pop-up from its 2D form into a 3D brick. Curved creases were laser-scored into the cardstock to encourage it to take a 3D form when the robots applied forces to it at certain points. The proposed method has potential advantages over large machines and simple build materials. It enables task-assignment flexibility and portability. Scaling the operation can be accomplished by adding or removing additional units as needed. The use of assembly robots also opens new horizons for design creativity, allowing architects to explore new ideas that would be unwieldy and expensive to construct using traditional techniques. Our proof-of-concept used a fleet of five Cozmo robots. Each Cozmo weighs 180 grams and has a 3D printed forklift attached to its lift. The Cozmos work collaboratively to popup-construct 3D bricks and assemble them into a chain.Item Calgary, Canada "The Great Fire of 1886"(2017-10-12) Wang, AshleyEvery city has experienced a major disaster, some cities survived and learned from it, some did not. This project is going to find the biggest disaster from individual’s case city and explore how did resolve the problem during the history. Calgary is the largest city in the Canadian province of Alberta. Founded in 1875 by European settler, the city now rapidly growing as the center of Canada’s oil industry. 1886, only couple years after the city started, Calgary had its first major fire in town. The big fire on Ninth Avenue, brought big changes to the new-born city and started a sandstone building boom after the fire.Item Casablanca: Colonial & Post-colonial Urbanism(2020-09-29) Monroy, AngelicaThe 2019 PAN-AFRICA study abroad program was based on a comparison of three major port cities: Casablanca, Tangier, and Marseilles. Students were to see first hand the inter-relationship between Arab and French culture in the built environment in each city. The French re-imagined Casablanca, also the site location, had a port that was largely industrialized after becoming a major port city in Africa. As a result, the port isolated itself from the rest of the culture-rich city. The purpose of CASAPORT was to re-imagine 8 million square miles of port grounds into a hybrid 2019 master plan.Item Copenhagen Fire of 1728(2017-10-12) Ali, AfreenItem D - Disaster(2017-10-12) Alhakeem, GadaItem D.I.Y. Health: How Emerging Technology Empowers People to Prevent Future Health Issues and Hospital Interior Spaces(2017-10-12) Benavides, ItzayanaAccording to insurance and risk management firm Acrisure, there are more than 40,000 health-related software apps for smartphones with currently only 0.01% of the world’s population using them. This demonstrates an untapped potential for exponential growth in the medical industry. Before the introduction of this emerging technology, awareness of health problems was not available before they became serious for treatment. Smart phones and other consumer level products can collect health related data and enable people to interface with doctors with increasing information. This research investigates how health related technologies will transform the way humans connect with medicine individually and globally. This research explores the impacts of emerging technology on people, interactions, and interior hospital space conditions. The emergence of health-related technologies will impact how people interface with doctors and the environment of interior hospital spaces.Item Developing a Headset Integrating Vision Testing and VR with EEG Scan(2023-04-13) Wong, SarahConsider a Riemannian surface with positive Gaussian curvature, composed of a cylinder and two hemispheres at each end. Since it is established that surfaces of negative curvature exhibit hyperbolicity, it is natural to ask if we get similar results for surfaces of positive curvature. If our surface is flattened in one direction, and geodesic flow is applied, we want to show that this system exhibits characteristics of hyperbolicity. More precisely, we will show that the Lyapunov exponent is positive. We will first discretize geodesics by using nested functions that mimic an iterative map. This approximation is inspired by Euler's fixed step method in which the parameters will be the step size and number of steps. In order to iterate the geodesic, we will fix the step size and create a direction vector parallel to our initial tangent vector. As our direction vector leaves the surface, we need to project our point back onto the surface and our vector back onto the tangent space. We will use methods of Lagrange multipliers and the Gram-Schmidt Method for these respective projections. Once we approximate our geodesic flow, we can determine the sign of our Lyapunov exponent using methods of linear regression. Since this is a numerical approximation, there will be issues of uncertainty, truncating, and rounding due to the floating point problem in programming. However, this project will introduce new mechanisms to produce chaotic behavior and can be extended to higher dimensions.Item Enhancing Prosthetic Dexterity by Integrating Multi-Material Printing and Design(2020-09-29) Gorman, Niell5000 hand amputations occur annually in the US. With the average cost of a prosthetic hand currently over $10,000, many amputees are left without access to a functional prosthetic hand. 3D printing technology offers a solution to lower the cost of prosthetic hands. However, current affordable 3D-printed prosthetic hands are fragile, complex, and lacking realistic dexterity. The goal of this research is to develop a next-generation 3D-printed prosthetic hand with advanced dexterity, light weight, durability and affordability. Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) is a 3D-printable plastic with elastic properties. Through the application of TPU as a material for finger joints, the number of components can be reduced while dexterity is increased. This study involved the production of a prototype prosthetic hand using a multi-material design with rigid Polylactic Acid (PLA) finger segments and TPU finger joints. The resulting prototype features only 26 parts and is capable of several grip types. It uses a design inspired by the skeletal structure of the human hand, with individual metacarpal sections attached to a carpal hub. Future development of this concept will yield further improvements by increasing the range of motion of each digit, testing with real patients, and enhancing hand performance with the use of electric motors.Item Flood Control: Vienna(2017-10-12) Patel, GrismaItem From Pixel, to Plate: Additive Manufacturing Food and the Future of Restaurant Spaces(2017-10-12) Arteaga, Jeylen3D food printing is an emerging technology that uses extruded multimaterial ingredients to generate three-dimensional meals by layering of compounded food. Additive manufacturing will reduce waste and will encourage food sustainability, as well as potentially revolutionize global distribution food systems. Additionally, 3D printed food will transform the restaurant environment at an interior and social level. The research investigates future restaurant spaces via food processes and consumer trends. Food is an essential part of social and human experiences, therefore it should remain primordial to our everyday culture. This design explores a place where the dining experience meets a fresh, fast, and friendly environment.Item Great Kanto Earthquake: Yokohama, Japan(2017-10-12) Yu, AustineItem Harmoney of the Hustle: Productive Space, Human Experience, and the Balance Between Partitioned and Opened Environment(2017-10-12) Trudelle, EricIn the workplace, history has had a peculiar instance of repeating itself, reflecting shifting ideologies of how offices should be organized. This research investigation explores the impact of workspaces on productivity and human well-being through various methods of partitioning space. Studies conducted by Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, and Oxford Economics show evidence that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to organizing a workspace and that workspace design has a direct effect on an employee’s morale and ability to work diligently. The research included investigation into historical precedents including an US Copyright Office in Washington DC, an Intel Campus in Hong Kong, and a new and controversial Apple Campus in Silicon Valley, change over time, and varied configurations for partitioning productive spaces. After the investigation was pursued, spatial application was concluded to strike a balance between partitioned and coworking spaces.