INNOVATION DAY 2023 | computer science & engineering

External advisor: Nathan Griffin, Squanch Games

Students: Lauren Davis, Nathan Evans, Allen Ma, Chris Trimble, Eric Valdez

Website: Ethereal Desert Games

Project Gemini is a 3D puzzle-adventure game developed in the Unity game engine. This game follows the player as they return to their childhood village, which has fallen into disrepair due to seemingly supernatural forces. The player can speak and interact with the residents while attempting to rebuild the town. The player then can progress toward removing the evil plaguing the land by delving into the nearby dungeon. The game consists of two primary areas: the village and a desert-themed puzzle dungeon. The primary goal for this project is to create a fun and entertaining game that will further develop the skills that each of the team members possess.

External advisor: Matt McSweeney, Battleborn Mobile Veterinary Hospital

Students: Donald Bailie, Spencer Carter, Davis Desarle, Grant Kite

Website: Battleborn Mobile Application

Designing the Battleborn Mobile Application for Dr. Matt McSweeney will provide a fluid and more direct connection between his patients and his business. Our team has been putting together the front-end of the application to provide a functional visual for the clients at Battleborn Mobile Veterinary Hospital. Clients tend to want to see the visual progress of a non-tangible product and we completed some basic, functional web pages for the client. We have been working on the layouts of how the back-end connection to the website would work as well. The progression is showing results, and we are sticking to our predetermined timeline and achieving goals in a timely manner.

External advisor: Hung (Jim) La, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department, Advanced Robotics and Automation Laboratory

Students: Annette McDonough, Brock Patchin, Tanner Richnak

Website: Meet the ASBIR team!

The project presents a potential model for autonomous point-to-point navigation of a climbing, bicycle-like robot for inspecting ferromagnetic structures. Inspecting the structures utilizes a deep learning model to detect corroded areas via a mounted camera. The robot then will autonomously navigate to the affected area and investigate using various sensors. An autonomous control framework allows for navigation across an entire structure without requiring user visibility. The project also will provide a web-based user interface that the robot users can utilize to gain information from the inspection while maintaining safety by keeping the human workers on the ground.

External Advisors: Fred Harris, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department, Scott Fritzinger

Students: Ryan Dahan, Denielle Oliva, Rohman Sultan

Website: TickTrax

Ticks are parasitic insects that carry and spread a variety of diseases like Lyme disease and other contagious viruses. They can be found on domestic animals or just while walking through wooded areas. As the study of these parasites develops, there has been a possibility to create a database of different ticks found in different regions. A citizen science-based approach can be taken to gather such information without the need for the mobilization of a lab. To do this, a web application is used to gather the data needed for the lab. This website application is built on a Vue-based framework that allows the development for desktop and mobile devices. The web application allows users to create an individual account that will hold their personal information and will let them post about their found ticks. The addition of planned features is in development and will add to the value of the application.

External advisor: Erin Keith, UNR College of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Jodi Hieronymus, Andrei Iorgulescu, Erin Marden

Website: Outer Whorld

OuterWhorld is a web-based application that allows users to search, save and review books. The user can create reading goals for themselves that feed their adopted virtual snail when completed. If the user fails to complete their goals, the snail dies. Our project is important because it encourages a variety of people to read while entertaining them by using game-like mechanics.

External advisor: Emily Hand, UNR College of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Aaron Bartee, Melanie Bazgan, Lauren Feldman, Deandre Mylove, Clint Vega

Website: WolfCampus

WolfCampus is a social media platform for students. Here, students have the ability to communicate with fellow classmates in an academic setting outside of class. From sending class notes to answering campus questions on a Q-&-A board, WolfCampus keeps students connected and aware of what is happening around their campus. The primary purpose of WolfCampus is for students to have another resource to be up to date in their classes. Usually, students have to hope that they know someone in the class to send the lecturer’s notes before getting behind. WolfCampus will eliminate this issue completely and implement a trustworthy method to send and receive notes. WolfCampus also plans to implement machine learning to understand when students may be violating guidelines as well as to suggest information that may be useful based on previous searches and class enrollment. A book resell section will allow students to recycle textbooks, so individuals can receive the best price for a textbook at the quality that they desire. In essence, WolfCampus ensures that all students are connected via the same platform and will be able to communicate with each other efficiently.

External advisor: Alireza Tavakkoli, UNR College of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Stephen Foster, Grace Meredith, Parker Nelms, John Nunley

Website: Pictonode

Pictonode is a node-based image editor. It uses the image editing capabilities of GIMP to manipulate images in a non-destructive, lightweight way. Node-based editing offers an intuitive way to edit and visualize a series of changes to an image. Many modern image-editing software implement some form of node logic in order to represent non-destructive edits, but rarely is it represented visually in the user interface. Normally it is represented as a layer-based system which, with many image operations interacting with each other, becomes difficult to read. Pictonode aims to solve this problem while offering an environment for users to collaborate and share complex edits to apply to their own images.

External advisor: Emily Hand, UNR College of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Justin Choi, Yoonsung Nam, Melanie Sanchez, Yongyi Zhou

Website: Orfeus

Orfeus is a website that uses a machine learning model, OpenAI’s Jukebox, to generate music from a user-given audio sample in a user-chosen genre. Users will be able to create accounts and review music generated by others, in addition to generating new music.

External advisor: Andy Smith, Sierra Nevada Corporation

Students: Tristan Bailey, Gabriel Mortensen, Angel Muller, Aaron Ramirez

Website: Rocky Road

Rocky Road is a web application that utilizes Mapbox API to inform drivers about faulty road infrastructure using machine learning and computer vision. This project is important: by keeping drivers cautious of potential hazards, lives could be saved. By May 2023, Rocky Road will allow users to observe genuine road hazards, make custom comments regarding road conditions and automatically generate safer custom routes. This document’s purpose is to update the reader regarding Rocky Road’s primary functions as well as outline the efforts and additional considerations that have been made since fall of 2022. The data used in this project is provided courtesy of the Sierra Nevada Corporation and its platform for autonomous driving.

External advisor: Camille Bourquin, Bently Nevada

Students: Jason Brown, Jeffrey Carson, Jonathan Chavarria, Chandler Martin

Website: Bently Adventures

This highly interactive reservation system was developed specifically for the needs of industry-leading asset protection company Bently Nevada.

External advisors: Sergiu Dascalu, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department; Pengbo Chu, College of Science Department of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering

Students: Nathan Bertram, Dustin Hurtz, Charlotte Moreland, Levi Scully  

Website: MinerSim             

Our software engineering project, MinerSim, is focused on year one of the “Impact of Utilizing Immersive Virtual Reality and Dynamic Assessment on Mining Education from the Community of Inquiry Perspective” presented by College of Science Professor Pengbo Chu. With every year, our societal demands for raw materials increases. To meet this demand, innovation in mining is critical. Surveyed mining companies revealed that a lack of understanding of the scientific principles involved in mining engineering is one of the primary factors prohibiting mining engineers from excelling. The goal of MinerSim is to investigate whether an immersive virtual reality approach can improve understanding of the scientific concepts involved in mining. The final result of MinerSim will be proving that an immersive virtual reality approach is a stronger education tool over traditional lecturing methods.

External advisor: Nathan Griffin, Squanch Games

Students: Easton Berti, Jonathan Chi, Aaron Garza, Anthony Jimenez, Evan Lancaster

Website: Cataclysm

Cataclysm is a new fantasy action-adventure where the main character is set to defend their world from demonic invaders. This game is targeted towards users with interests in action- and RPG-genre games. However, we intend to make this game as inclusive to gaming users who have a wide preference in the action-adventure genre overall through the inclusion of diverse features that are symbolic to each genre. The combination of these varied features, detailed later, will present an enjoyable and invigorating experience throughout this game, making it worthwhile for gamers to invest their time in Cataclysm.

This game utilizes a first-person camera featuring Spellsword combat that is inspired by the likes of games like Skyrim. The user is able to incorporate both ranged magic attacks with melee sword and axe attacks to create their own unique style of engaging enemies. Outside of combat, users are given the opportunity to interact with designated objects, such as loose pages, books and significant objects that reveal the narrative underlying the gameplay. To present a visually appealing experience, we have incorporated the Niagara system to create visual effects of high fidelity, including environmental electrical effects, hanging lighting particles with Lumen lighting, and Chaos Engine’s destruction to produce a highly immersive environment. Those incorporated systems and features will create both an efficient and engaging game.

External advisors: Jared Freeman, LionDragon Studios; Rob McCay, Aristocrat; Michael Wilson, UNR University Libraries

Students: Robert Bothne, grant Davis, Dan Huynhvo, Abida Mim

Website: Card Mage

Card Mage is a 2D, rogue-like game where the goal is to move past a series of enemies and obstacles that are randomly generated to get to the end. The game will have deck-building aspects and randomly rotating cards for the player to use as abilities.

External advisors: Jared Freeman, Rob McKay, Michael Wilson

Students: Leo Galang, Allison Johnson, Emanuel Nunez, Zachary Slate

Website: Muscaria

Our main goal with this project is to create a 2D Metroidvania game that adds a twist to the subgenre and is entertaining to play. The game is centered around a girl who needs to find a mushroom in a cave to heal her sick younger brother. She must investigate the cave and watch for incoming enemies who protect the cave. As beginner developers, keeping the mechanics simple will benefit the game in the long run. The mechanics that we do plan on implementing include dashing, wall jumping and sliding, jumping, double jumping, melee and projectile attacks, and possibly more as implementation continues. There also will be numerous AI enemies that the player must defeat. It will run on the Unity engine, and we will use the programming language C# to write any necessary scripts.

External advisors: Lei Yand and Amirhessam Yazdi, UNR College of Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Ian Ayers, Curtis Burchfield, Michael Moosmuller

Website: Wildfire Smoke Detection

Deep-learning (DL) based object detection algorithms are beneficial to areas of climate science involving wildfire prevention, observation and intelligence. As wildfires become more prevalent, the need for advanced techniques in processing video feeds has become crucial for smoke detection. Existing DL-based techniques have been developed based on convolution networks and are proven to be effective in wildfire detection. However, these datasets are primarily commercial and/or closed-source. One of the few open-source models is Nemo, a benchmark for fine-grained wildfire smoke detection in the incipient stage of a wildfire. Using this model as a basis, our team intends to collaborate with its authors to build a convenient user interface and refined data preprocessing for accurately detecting wildfire smoke, helping to bring more attention to the open-source wildfire smoke detection system.

External advisor: Sean Montgomery, EmotiBit

Students: Justin Fan, Jaemin Lee, Kobe Maristela, Chad Sherf

Website: Emoticoach

Our team is working on creating a fitness app that works with the EmotiBit. EmotiBit is all open source, so we are making our algorithms using the device’s multiple data sensors for insightful data science relating to fitness. Our app will have workout-tracking capabilities and view past- and real-time data from the EmotiBit. What sets us apart is that EmotiBit is all open source. Our algorithms for health metrics will not be a black box: the user can see how the metrics are calculated.

External advisor: Dave Talari, Verizon

Students: Anthony Ganci, Noah Howren, Colin Martires

Website: PITLANE

PITLANE aims to be the go-to web application for all Formula 1 fans that are interested in the intricacies of the motorsport all while delivering convenient and fun features such as a fantasy league and real-time race updates during the season. PITLANE’s importance lies in the services it delivers to users: visualizations of telemetry data, concurrent season updates and a fantasy league to interact with other users of the application. PITLANE’s implementation consists of a front-end implemented in Vue.js, a back-end implemented in the Flask micro web framework and a PostgreSQL database.

External advisors: Jared Freeman, Rob McKay, Mike Wilson |LionDragon Studio

Students: Gavin Farrell, Jarod Gobert, Jessica Gurney, Mickey Kerr, Jordan Newkirk

Website: Hands of the Damned

An outlandish and surreal video game of poker with a tarot card twist: ride along the infinity train and challenge strangers to poker matches with abilities that will completely change your view on how poker can be played.

External advisor: Batyr Charyyev, UNR College of Engineering department of Computer Science & Engineering

Students: Kenneth Escovilla, Rameen Feda, Javier Perez, Kenneth Peterson

Website: SpyOT

Owners of Internet of Things networks are mostly unaware of the security level of their environment or lack the technical knowledge to secure them. This means that they are unlikely to be aware of or take action against malicious agents that intend to abuse these vulnerabilities by stringing their devices to botnets or installing malicious malware. SpyOT intends to address this problem by analyzing a given environment’s properties and informing the user of the level of security their environment is at by safely looking into potential vulnerabilities and proposing a set of precautionary actions. We hope SpyOT may add a level of transparency to these widely used networks and provide some agency to both casual and professional users.

External advisors: Christos Papachristos and Alireza Tavakkoli, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Jeau Labyorteaux, Froilan Luna-Lopez, Jason Mills

Website: C3po: Copy 3D, Paste Object

Team 20 is working to create C3PO, Copy 3D Paste Object, a 3D scanner that is able to translate real-world objects into 3D printable STL files. Our project works through the use of a stereo depth camera that can capture point cloud data. By rotating a given object and gathering point cloud data on all sides, our project will be able to digitally reconstruct this object for potential uses in 3D printing, rapid prototyping or even game design. We currently plan to implement functionality for scanning, viewing and exporting the generated object.

External advisor: Alireza Tavakkoli, UNR College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Students: Keegan Graf, Chad Josim, Jason Liang, Keith Nelson, Sebastian Reel

Website: Motion 21

Motion 21 is an American Sign Language learning application using computer vision and machine learning to provide the user with live feedback on what gesture or character they are holding up on-screen. With an interactive interface, lessons containing letters and other topics, and the ability to save and continue progress, the application aims to combine education with modern technology to create a robust way to learn a new language. The team behind Motion 21 also aims to spread ASL across a wider audience. The team hopes that applying modern technology to education will bring interest to learn important skills for not just the hearing-impaired community but other communities as well.

External advisors: Jared Freeman, Rob McKay, Michael Wilson of LionDragon Studio

Students: Vaishnavi Desai, Guillermo Hernandez, Kyle Knotek, Daniel Lontz

Website: Shatterblade

This project is a VR hack-and-slash being developed in the Unity engine. Shatterblade is a VR game, therefore the intended users will be solely users with VR capabilities. Shatterblade will expand on the current VR market, as there are very few fully developed VR games. The player will progress through several narrative-driven levels on their journey through the campaign, fighting different enemies along the way. Dialogue as well as a story are planned features currently being implemented. Shatterblade will take place in a cyberpunk-inspired city with a synthwave soundtrack, all made from scratch by the team.

Advisors: David Feil-Seifer, Devrin Lee, Clayton Synard, Demitri Bannoura

Students: Charles Dunn, Joe Paschke, Maxwell Synard, Catherine Wedin

Website: Vendi

Vendi is an app that will display all the local vending machines within a certain range of the user. Users will be able to: filter vending machines in their area depending on their type; submit photos and information for new or existing machines; and add reviews to existing machines. To ensure the crowdsourcing is accurate, a custom-made image recognition model will make sure images of vending machines are being uploaded. The crowdsourcing will be incentivized by implementing a points system that allows rewards to be redeemed by users. This app will allow users to find food, beverages and miscellaneous items quickly and efficiently.

External advisor: Eelke Folmer, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department Chair

Students: Cody Jackson, Zachary Kruljac, Sebastien Yokoyama

Website: Project Escher

The main goal of our game is to create a fun-to-play puzzle game that involves mechanics and geometry that can only be experienced in virtual reality. It is our belief as a team that the inclusion of visual illusions will create a game that evokes feelings of curiosity and enjoyment. The game’s objective is to challenge the users’ preconceived ideas of physics and geometry while keeping the user curious to explore deeper into the unknown. This will be achieved through diverse puzzles that trick and manipulate the user’s basic understanding of “reality.”

The intended demographic of users that we aim to please in our development is fairly broad. We wish to appeal to groups that enjoy puzzle games, mystery and virtual reality. With users that fall into these categories, we hope to create a game that provides entertainment along with stimulating creativity and critical thinking. In terms of public interest, virtual reality games such as ours are driven by desire for immersive, interactive and challenging experiences that engage users in innovative ways. Video games in general offer a sense of escape and provide a virtual environment that allows users to interact with the games in fun and intuitive ways.

External advisor: Keith Lancaster, UNR

Students: Julian Fliegler, Cade Hockersmith, Kim Meza Martinez, John Watson

Website: EDNA

Our project —Expiration Date Notification Application, or EDNA — is a mobile application that allows users to track the expiration dates of their food by scanning barcodes. The user will scan or manually enter a product’s barcode and the system will look up the product’s expiration date in our database. The system then will store those items and expiration dates in a user’s “shelf” and in an interactable calendar, then notify users when their items are going to expire. The goal of our project is to give people a simple way to reduce their food waste and save money.

External advisors: Jason Sando, Alexander Mathew

Students: Gerard Bensadoun Gutsens, James Looney, Matthew Tang

Website: gainSpot

The project is aimed to be a fitness tracker providing updates on live gym traffic, what machines are available and working and what equipment the gym user needs to supply themselves. This project is important because it offers a tool for users, new and old, to have a better experience at the gym, whether it is knowing how busy a gym is or knowing a machine isn’t working beforehand. For gainSpot, we intend to design and implement a website that has the following features but not limited to: user accounts, a page to display gym status and location and busyness of a gym.

External advisor: Chris Cullen, UNR graduate student

Students: John Busse, Bryce Farley, Cole Renfro, Cole Wheeler

Website: Rossliad: Kingdom of Shadows

Our team is making a 3D top-down, turn-based, role-playing video game named “Rossliad: Kingdom of Shadows.” Currently, we intend to implement an exploration system, combat system, a unique story, character level-ups and an equipment system on the Unreal Engine. With this game, we intend to create a unique and entertaining experience for our players. Ideally, our gameplay and story will allow the player to engage with the game and enjoy playing it.

External advisors: Frederick C. Harris, Jr., UNR College of Engineering Associate Dean; and Erik Marsh, UNR

Students: Dana Conley, Joshua Dahl, Misha Desear, Jared White

Website: Castaway: Wizard on a Raft

Castaway is a single-player, rouge-like, deck-building card game that is enjoyable for both newcomers to the deck-building genre and veteran players. You are a wizard stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean with the goal to survive the progressively difficult obstacles the ocean throws your way. To do so, you must upgrade your ship and find various crewmates to assist you in your journey. As you defeat various monstrosities, you gain the resources needed to upgrade your ship and keep the crew happy. Castaway is important because of its new take on a well-loved genre and the ease of access the game provides to its players, whether it’s via accessibility or through the mechanics of the game.

External advisor: Eelke Folmer, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department Chair

Students: Aaron Brantley, Kiara Compton, Ryan Rytel, Jessica Velez

Website: Food Dash

Food Dash is a two-player virtual reality cooking game that is fast-paced and involves throwing objects. It takes on the storyline of two characters, Jack and Jill, who inherited a rundown restaurant and have to repair and rid it of its rat infestation before the arrival of the health inspector. Players must work together to clean up the kitchen, cook delicious dishes and serve customers while trying to get rid of the rats. The goal is to get the restaurant ready for the health inspector’s evaluation. Players can use tools to eliminate the rats and keep them out of sight. The health inspector arrives and evaluates the restaurant. If Jack and Jill have taken care of the rats successfully and cleaned up the kitchen, they will pass the evaluation and be on their way to running a successful restaurant. If they fail, the inspector will shut down the restaurant, and Jack and Jill will have to start over again. The game centers gameplay around interactive physics, allowing players to help each other by throwing objects (ingredients, utensils) at one another. It’s developed with the Unity engine utilizing the Meta Quest 2 headset.

Advisors: Ryan Devaney, Jacob Lee

Students: Thaddeaus Lam, Nathaniel McFadden, Caleb Stickler

Website: Bently Nevada Global Certificate Management Platform

The project is a web application developed for Bently Nevada that will display all the certificates for their devices.

Students: Clifford Lewis, Dustin Mader, Kaden Nesch, Alexander Ram

Website: BudgetFit

BudgetFit is a web application that allows users to manage their diet, exercise and grocery budgeting in one place. BudgetFit will give up-to-date information on which store the user should shop at to get the best deals for their specified grocery list. Using this data in conjunction with user information and nutrition data, BudgetFit will map trends and recommend ways for the user to reach their goals.

Advisors: Araam Zaremehrjardi, Lei Yang

Students: Carl Antiado, Antonio Lang, Andrew Ramirez, Nathaniel Leslie Rivas

Website: Plant and Soil Property Classification Neural Network Development (PSPNet)

Plant and Soil Property Classification Network (PSPNet) is a web application that provides access to machine learning models to domain scientists and researchers for studying and combating wildfires. This project aims to make an intuitive website to allow the domain scientists and researchers to use the models to identify plant species from images so they focus on interpreting the data, rather than manually labeling all the data. The team will implement the front-end website, the back-end trained models, a system database and the communication between all systems. This document outlines all updates to the project, specification and design since the last design documentation.

External advisor: Alireza Tavakkoli, UNR College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Students: Edward Fabela-Becerra, Vincent Ha, Kalista Hong, Jacky Yu

Website: Memory Mesmer

Memory Mesmer is an app that is a series of minigames where the users will be timed and given the according score. This app will focus on memorization and cognitive function games. The application will randomize the list of games and then let the user play them to complete a round. The completion of all the games will show the user’s total score for that round. The app also will track their score and save it for later use; each time the user receives a higher score, the new high score will be updated. The app will keep track of the progress and improvements made as well.

External advisors: Melanie Schmidt-Wolf, Ponkoj Chandra Shill, UNR SARG

Students: Jacob Boe, Adam Hurd, Yee Tham, Bill Tong, Wyatt Young

Website: Boardbot

BoardBot is a robot that plays the board game Monopoly against a human player.

External advisor: Alireza Tavakkoli, UNR College of Engineering Computer Science & Engineering Department

Students: Rahul Bagchi, John Dieu, Diego Lamas, Sharyn Smith, Gordon Tan

Website: Darkness

Darkness is a 2D game that delivers an immersive, RPG experience in Unity that is heavily inspired by the poem “Darkness” by Lord Byron. This project will take on a serious and gritty tone with an apocalyptic setting. We intend to create an immersive experience through innovative gameplay and storytelling, leaving players with an unforgettable adventure.