Projects

In April 2020 I published this paper in SPIE at Automatic Target Recognition XXX conference. I presented at the online version of the conference, because the in-person conference was cancelled due to COVID-19.

Isaac Zachmann and Theresa Scarnati “A comparison of template matching and deep learning for classification of occluded targets in LiDAR data”, Proc. SPIE 11394, Automatic Target Recognition XXX, 113940H (29 April 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2556392

Fundamentals of Engineering, Advanced Energy Vehicle Project, Team E
In Fundamentals of Engineering, I worked with a team of four throughout the semester on our Advanced Energy Vehicle project. We designed and created a lightweight model to travel along a ceiling-mounted monorail system. The system needed to stop, to pick up and carry a load, and change directions. The project gave me experience in collaborating with a team to have more ideas and a more efficient approach to solving problems. Throughout the semester, I gained experience using SolidWorks to model different designs of our vehicle, 3-D printing to create custom parts for our vehicle, C to program the Arduino that controlled our vehicle, and HTML to create a good looking website for documenting our progress on the project. We also outlined our progress and results throughout the semester with presentations and technical documents. We ran different tests to experiment with different areas of the design, such as breaking mechanisms and vehicle shapes. These tests helped us to decide on and implement the most efficient design for our final project.

MakeOHI/O Makeathon
In spring 2018, I went with a team of four to the MakeOHI/O Makeathon at The Ohio State Univeristy. The Makathon is a 24 hour event where people can explore ideas and create devices. Our plan was to use a Raspberry Pi, a Bluetooth speaker, and Amazon Alexa software to create a smart speaker. Unfortuneatly, we were not able to complete our task as we ran into some technical difficulties early on as we were unable to connect a private network to the internet while at the event. After about 5 hours of trying to fix our problems, the team evenentually decided to give up and go home. Although we were unable to complete the task we set out for, I learned that next time I should go more prepared for obsticles. I also learned that sometimes it is better to give up on an idea and find a new idea, rather than to waste effort trying to make it work.

In fall 2018 and spring 2019 I attended two more makeathon/hackathons. Our fall project was a motor controlled by an iPhone app. For this project my team, who marketed the project as a keyless door opener/lock, won a prize. In the spring my team worked on a device that would sort recycling and trash using computer vision. We did not finish this project, but it was still fun to work on.