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Elinora’s Status Report for 03/18/23

This week, I mainly focused on translating our web app design into code with Sirisha, primarily working on the login and registration pages. I also looked into how we could use Firebase to store our login information for the web app and read through the intro tutorials on its website. I spent a lot of my time this week outside of class on the ethics assignment as well. 

I am mostly on schedule according to our Gantt chart. We had previously scheduled for me to assemble the device this past week, but we are still waiting on some ordered components to arrive. Last week I had set the goal that I would research and decide on a cellular dongle, but I decided to hold off on that task for a while since we won’t need the cellular dongle for 2 more weeks. 

Next week, I will finish up the structure of the web app with Sirisha and create and feed dummy data into the web app to calculate and display the corresponding graphics on the metrics page. Once we receive the accelerometer and camera, I will test the accelerometer and assemble the device. I will also be working on the second half of the ethics assignment and attending the ethics lecture, so I will make sure to plan ahead and reserve more time to work on tasks for the project outside of class.

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Team Status Report for 03/11/23

One of our current risks is that the Jetson AGX Xavier will require more power than the 12V car outlet can provide. This week we will take initial measurements to determine how much power the Jetson is consuming when on and play some music through the speaker to get a better idea of whether 12V will be sufficient. If our Jetson ends up consuming too much power, we can mitigate this by borrowing a different Jetson from the ECE department that has lower power consumption but slower computation abilities (such as a Jetson Nano). Another risk is that the audio-guided calibration process will be unclear to the user. To address this, we will conduct testing of the calibration process with at least 3 users that aren’t one of us and get their feedback on how easy the process is to follow.

We had 2 main changes to the design of the system since last week. First, we decided to use a cellular dongle instead of a WiFi dongle to send data from the Jetson to our web application. This change will allow us to connect directly from the Jetson to the internet without requiring any additional efforts from the user (such as setting up their own hotspot for the Jetson to connect to).  The second change was that we added a logs page to the web application that will allow for a user to view a record with more detailed reasoning for each of the instances that triggered feedback from their DriveWise device. The most current page layout for the web application is below:

We are on track with our Gantt chart and our overall schedule has not been changed. 

After establishing our subsystems, we have determined that the main tools we will need to be able to learn how to use will be OpenCV DNN and Firebase. OpenCV DNN will be used for the CV/ML subsystem and Firebase will be used to enable login/registration capabilities on the web application. 

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Elinora’s Status Report for 03/11/23

Earlier in the week, Sirsha and I set up the initial structure of our web application in React over VSCode LiveShare. We programmed the frontend basics for the login and stats pages and tested that we could access these pages by clicking different buttons on the web app (like the “Login” button leading from the login page to the stats/home page). We also decided to add an additional page to our UI design in which users can access the individual log for each time that feedback is triggered from their device. Viewing this page provides users with more detail regarding the kind of inattention that they exhibited and the layout of the page is included in this week’s team status report. I spent the rest of my time this week working on the design report with Yasser and Sirisha. More specifically, I was assigned the introduction, use-case requirements, architecture, and parts of the implementation and design trade studies sections. I also briefly tested the speaker that we ordered and confirmed that it played sound clearly from a .wav file when connected to my computer. 

I am pretty much on schedule with our Gantt chart. After we decided to use a cellular data dongle instead of a WiFi dongle to send data from the jetson to the web application, we wanted to conduct more research before ordering a particular cellular dongle. Since transmitting the data to the web application is not scheduled in the Gantt chart until 2 weeks from now, I will hold off on submitting the order until we are sure. Otherwise, I am on schedule with my tasks.  

For my deliverables next week, I am scheduled to assemble the hardware components of the device and test power consumption. I also want to research different cellular data dongles and decide on one by the end of the week. For the web application, I will more fully flesh out the login and registration pages this week and potentially set up Firebase for the actual login/registration capabilities of these pages.

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Elinora’s Status Report for 02/25/23

This week was pretty busy for all of us and we had design presentations during class, so our Gantt chart schedule was relatively light. On Sunday I spent a lot of time finishing up our design presentation slides and speaker notes with Yasser and Sirisha. I submitted an order request for an accelerometer, which should arrive next week to begin testing on. The last part that I am in charge of ordering is the Wifi card for the Jetson, but I want to have a conversation with a TA that has more experience with using Jetsons before I select a card and submit the order form. I also met with Sirisha outside of class to create a more final design for the web app and which technologies we wanted to use. We decided that we wanted to use React for the frontend, Firebase for login capabilities, and that we want to send data from the Jetson to our cloud data storage (on an AWS S3 bucket) at routine intervals every few minutes. We also decided that we wanted to include a log page in the UI design that would record the time that each notification to the user took place and the reason for that notification (inattention or drowsiness and a more specific description).

I misread the schedule last week (mixed up start of week vs end of week dates) on our Gantt chart and thought that we were behind schedule in my last status report. The tasks that I thought needed to be completed by the end of this week are actually scheduled to be completed by the end of next week. I am on track according to our actual schedule that we confirmed as a group. 

The deliverables I listed in my status report for last week (since I misread our schedule) are the deliverables that I hope to complete by the end of next week. After talking with a TA about the Wifi card, I will submit an order form by the end of next week. With the initial logistics and page designs for the web app all set, Sirisha and I are ready to set up the initial structure of the web app together next week. We will also divide up which pages each of us will work on and I will start implementing the basic format of my assigned pages. Next week I am scheduled to conduct initial testing on the individual hardware components. I want to test out playing sounds from code on the Jetson to the external speaker that we ordered. Additionally, I want to measure the power consumption of the Jetson while running basic code (likely just the code sending audio data to the speaker) to see how feasible it will be for us to fully power the whole device with the 12V power outlet in a car. I will also work with Yasser and Sirisha to apply the feedback from our design presentation to write our design report. 

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Elinora’s Status Report for 02/18/23

I spent the majority of my time this week working on aspects of our upcoming design presentation. After discussing and deciding the design/implementation of our project with my teammates, I put together the system block diagram for our presentation. Sirisha and I also worked together to make more fleshed-out UI designs for the web application aspect of our project with Google Slides. We designed the login, registration, and main statistics (home) pages.  

Capstone UI Design as of 2_18_23

Outside of the presentation, I spent some time looking into how to send the driver inattention data from the Jetson (where CV and classification is taking place) to our web application while in a moving car. It looks like adding a wifi card to the Jetson with bluetooth capabilities will work for our purposes, but I want to talk more with one of the TAs/professors with more experience working with Jetsons on Monday to confirm this before submitting an order for the part. I also submitted orders for our speaker and a cable to connect the audio jack of the speaker to the USB-C port on the Jetson. 

My progress is behind schedule according to our Gantt chart. Specifically the “Device Schematic/Parts Selection” and “Testing Each Component Individually” tasks will need to be pushed to next week when we finish submitting our parts orders and receive the parts that we want to test individually. When setting our original deadlines, we did not take into consideration the time it would take to decide, approve/order, and receive each of our individual components. We do have our borrowed Jetson, but all of our other components are either ordered and not yet received or will be ordered on Monday. I updated our Gantt chart to reflect this. 

In the next week, I hope to finish submitting all of our part orders with Yasser and Sirisha and test out playing sounds from code on the Jetson to the external speaker that we ordered. I will also work with Sirisha to implement the initial setup of our web application (creating the initial pages and some basic components in React.js) according to our UI design. Additionally, I want to measure the power consumption of the Jetson while running basic code (likely just the code sending audio data to the speaker) to see how feasible it will be for us to fully power the whole device with the 12V power outlet in a car. 

The particular ECE courses I’ve taken that cover the engineering principles our team used to develop our design are: 10-301, 18-220, 18-341/18-447, 17-437 (Web App Development), and 05-391 (Designing Human-Centered Software). 

 

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Team Status Report for 02/11/23

Overall, our goals for this week were to research which specific parts we wanted to use, research how to apply CV/ML algorithms, begin designing the web application, and start working on the slides for our design presentation. Next week (according to our gantt chart) we will finalize all aspects of our initial project design and complete the design presentation slides. We will also continue researching facial detection algorithms and order components/begin initial testing on any that arrive. 

To answer the additional question for this week, our project includes considerations for public safety, environmental safety, and cultural factors. The overall project goal to monitor distracted driving practices and relay feedback to drivers to reduce unsafe behaviors promotes public safety (both for the driver and others on the road). Additionally, we are considering privacy concerns by making each user’s distracted driving data only available to them, with no feature to view others’ data on the web application. Although less directly related, we are also considering cultural factors in the sense that this product (if widely adopted) could create increased awareness for what constitutes distracted driving and could bring about a cultural shift in driving behavior. 

At this point, the most significant risk that could jeopardize the success of our project is not having a concrete plan on approaching the project with well-thought out hardware and software component selections. To mitigate this, we are each doing individual research and then discussing as a group all aspects of our design before finalizing it. Our design proposal presentation is the most important part of our project to get right to reduce later headaches and set us up for success for the rest of the semester. Further along the line, the risk that we are most concerned about is our ability to tune our chosen algorithm to accommodate low-light conditions and obstructions to viewing the driver’s eyes (e.g. sunglasses or a hat). We are attempting to best mitigate this risk by planning for 4 weeks of testing and tuning the algorithm and an additional 3 weeks of slack time at the end of our schedule. 

So far, no significant changes have been made from the user and technical requirements and general hardware and software components that we presented in our proposal presentation. After we receive feedback next week on our proposal presentation, we are expecting that there may be some changes that we will have to make.  We are currently on track with our initial schedule. 

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Elinora’s Status Report for 02/11/23

Last weekend, I spent the majority of my time finishing up the proposal slides and practicing for our proposal presentation since I was our presenter. During the week I worked on defining the key requirements for our web application and brainstorming different ways that we could present personal driving attentiveness data to the user. I sketched out an example layout for main page of the web application, but expect this to change significantly when Sirisha and I work on the design together next week. I also submitted a request to use the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier from the ECE department, which was approved. 

My progress is on schedule with the chart we presented in our proposal presentation. We gave ourselves relatively less to do this week since we wanted to get feedback on the proposal presentation before investing significant time into components of our design presentation. 

Next week I will work with Sirisha on the design of our web application and hope to deliver the initial design. This will ideally include a fleshed out description and visualization of all the data that we want to include in the application, as well as the general user flow. Working with the rest of the team, I hope to also complete our design presentation slides, which are due next Sunday. Additionally, we will all be finalizing part selection and submitting orders for our parts early next week so that we can start testing the individual components as soon as possible.