Innovation was everywhere you looked recently in the Gates Hall third-floor lounge. Team Koadar Health – Kaiwen Zhong and Adisa Soren – offered activity tracking for manual wheelchair users; Sagar Erka and Elijah Joseph Weber-Han introduced Computer Face, a phone-turned-expressive robot aimed at helping create more inclusive team dynamics, and Rohit Prakash demoed a brain-computer interface to control devices (you’ll have to see this for yourselves).

And that was just one side of the lounge.

On May 4, nearly 20 student-designed innovations were on display during a joint poster and demo session led by students from the Human-Robot Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing courses. The HRI projects targeted healthy team dynamics through robotics, as each team presented a robot prototype to encourage more inclusive team conversations and healthy dialogue among human participants. The idea for robot intervention is based off work being done in Cornell’s Robots in Groups Lab, where researchers are out to better understand how a robot, working in a group setting, can help humans avoid team conflict. 

Regarding the Ubiquitous Computing class, student projects were equally outstanding. Among some of the projects: a motion-based ID verification system based on one’s gait – Imagine if your front door automatically unlocked because a motion sensor detected the precise way in which you walk; a shirt that tracks your vital signs and, if worn at a concert, could alert first responders to a possible emergency; and EmChat, an emotional context tool to help cut through the ambiguities of text messages.

Have a look at what you might have missed.