Project Information Coming soon

Bearly There

Students collaborated with Northrop Grumman to find ways to effectively monitor bears in their natural habitat. The team developed a collar with sensors that measure temperature, location and motion with an ESP32 as the microprocessor base for retrieving sensor data, and they are researching how to monitor the health and condition of the bears as well. However, they discovered that there are significant problems measuring bio-indicators using a collar-mounted sensor. Searching for options, they discovered small devices that can be implanted under the skin and prospects for this approach are under study.

They also explored and prototyped LoRa network data links that would push the data to an intermediate device on a UAV that would then upload data to a server with web services, databases and tools to build an information portal. AWS cloud-based services are one option which would provide the toolkit to create the portal.

1. Red Cross Drone
   The Red Cross needs a custom drone that can take off and land vertically (VTOL) and get better flight times than traditional quad copters. The system needs some way of collecting information, such as damage assessment and geolocation, that would then be passed along for data processing, analysis and distribution.

2. Red Cross/Amazon Web Services
   Many agencies are involved in emergency response, such as Civil Air Patrol, FEMA, Red Cross, Coast Guard, civilians, etc., but they need an effective way to collect, analyze and distribute data. This team will work to define what information is important, what analytics can be performed and create a structure that allows the data to be processed and distributed among the many agencies.

3. Tracking Collar
   OpenCollar and the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) are looking to create the next generation animal tracking collar for terrestrial mammals, such as bears and elephants. Traditionally a tracking collar can only record the location using GPS and then transmit this over satellite, but knowing what an animal is doing while in that location is far more valuable. The JMU team will investigate strategies for monitoring animal behavior and correlate habitat to behavior. The data will be transmitted remotely where it can be processed by a researcher. The core challenges are building on existing hardware designs, integrating new sensors, distributing this data and building something that is suitable to be mounted on an animal in the wild.

4. Beyond Plastics
   This team will be looking into the prevalence of plastics in our society and how plastic waste makes its way into the oceans. This waste is in the form of cigarette filters, plastic bottles, etc. The waves break these plastics down into micro plastics which are then consumed by fish which we then consume. The effects of this are not well understood for either fish or humans. This team will look into how the plastic enters our waterways, identify the scale of the problems, and the ways it impacts our environment and then develop strategies to mitigate the problem.