Undergraduate Research

RECG currently has the following resarch projects for undergraduate students. Our research often requires strength in at least one of the following three areas: writing code, tinkering hardware, and playing with equations. A student can work on a project either for credit or for pay, usually in collaboration with a Ph.D. student. The hours and start-time are flexible. All the projects are intended for publication. Our past undergraduate projects have led to high-quality publications, including a Best Paper Award paper. Send your resume to Professor Zhong if you are interested.

Driver development for TI OMAP4

TI OMAP4 is a state-of-the-art mobile System-on-Chip that powers many cutting-edge smartphones, e.g., Motorola Droid and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The most intriguing part of OMAP4 is its heterogeneity: in addition to its standard dual Cortex-A9 cores, it has dual hidden Cortex-M3 cores that run at a much lower clock while offering much higher energy-efficiency to light workloads. In this project, the student will implement a few key device drivers for them. The device drivers will enable application code that runs on Cortex-M3 to operate peripheral I/Os, e.g., I2C or framebuffer, and therefore will be critical components in fully unleashing OMAP4's potential of power-efficiency for applications.

Predicting GPS availability in urban canyons

GPS receptivity in urban canyons is poor due to blockage of satellite signals by high-rise buildings. This is detrimental to the applicability of GPS in supporting location-sensitive applications, including location based services, in urban environments. This project will develop a model to predict line-of-sight between user and satellite, which can then be used to augment GPS in determining user location. In this project, the student will assist in model construction and experimental verification of the model.

Mobile display application optimization

Mobile displays face difficulties in many environments, including situations involving bright ambient light, wide viewing directions, or shaking situations (e.g. while walking). Using inertial measurement units, cameras, and other sensors on many modern devices, a system able to sense a viewing environment and adapt its display content accordingly. The solutions will optimize for visibility, readability and usability of the display, as well as energy-efficiency of the system. The student will measure and characterize factors that impair the mobile display and develop software on Apple, Android, or Windows Phone devices to build prototypes that sense and counteract negative viewing effects.

Analyzing Twitter for events

Twitter is a platform for public to share and obtain information. SportSense is a web application developed by RECG that analyzes public tweets to extract useful information about what is happening in the physical world. The student will work on the statistical learning algorithm for extracting information from noisy tweet streams.

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