UMD Computer Science Students Coming Up With Cutting Edge Ideas And Technology

DULUTH, Minn. — Computer Science students at UMD are coming up with the latest and greatest cutting-edge ideas and technology.

Undergraduate and graduate students worked together to present their capstone projects Monday.

It is all about applying computer science to health care. Projects include a penguin designed to help reduce stress and a robotic dog that can go for a walk.

The 15 week-long project gives students the freedom to come up with an original idea and build it.

“For 16 weeks I can continuously lecture about all the things that they’re working on you know. Teach them about various types of sensors, actuators, teach them how to build robots, but it’s all theory. Right? Unless they go out and do it on their own, they won’t face the problems,” said Arshia Khan, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Computer Science.

One group came up with a robot designed to help people with anxiety and advance the endurance of athletes. The robot pushes in and out acting like it is actually breathing. A student says through research, the breathing exercises are shown to truly work.

“It is very exciting cause at the end of the day we get to help people. That’s the main objective behind robotics. We want to make everyone’s lives easier; we want to make them better and hopefully we get people’s anxiety levels down and help out athletes in their fields,” said Sabir Saheel, UMD graduate student.

The class is called Sensors and Internet of Things focusing on hands on work and finding solutions to real-world problems.