2019 Computer Science Capstone Design Projects

OCESS is an Ottawa-area volunteer high school club for spaceflight simulation. It uses a combination of 1) physical astronaut living quarters and 2) a software simulation of spaceship piloting and other aspects of spaceflight.

Our project focuses on 2) the software simulation. The current software simulation suite has been developed by OCESS supervisor Dr. Magwood over (at least) the past decade, and has been used to accurately and reliably simulate countless space missions. However, its code-base is not easily maintained by the volunteer students of OCESS, and has other technical limitations imposed on it by its implementation language (Microsoft QBasic).

Our project is to rewrite the spaceflight component of this simulation software, which is the largest component of the software suite. We aim to faithfully replicate as many features of the software suite as possible; specifically its scientific accuracy, its simplicity, and its integration into other pieces of the QBasic software suite. Additionally, it should be maintainable by students of OCESS.

By keeping the original features of the QBasic software suite, we have to do significantly less feature design, and we also keep our project familiar to its users: student members of OCESS. As well, these students will be able to gain experience maintaining a real-life piece of open-source software. Simultaneously, OCESS supervisor Dr. Magwood will be able to focus less on maintenance of the QBasic software suite.

The success of the project will be determined by how readily student members of OCESS adopt the rewritten software, both through maintenance and through actual use of the software. Ideally, a ”mini-mission” of several real-life hours will successfully make use of the rewritten software.

There are many interesting events happening on campus, including club events, info sessions, or events organized by a faculty or program. To find out what are the upcoming events, students need to go to differ- ent platforms to access the information, such as the Facebook page of different clubs for club events, or the school website for info sessions and academic events. Sometimes, students might miss the events they are interested in only because they were not aware of these events.

Currently, using Waterloo Portal, students are able to view a list of upcoming academic events; through Facebook, students are able to discover club events shared by friends or different groups they have joined. In our project, we aim to combine everything together, thereby helping students to discover what is going on at the campus.

The goal of the project is to provide a useful application to UW students, which allows them to quickly view the events happening at the moment, or the events that will happen in the coming days or weeks. It also allows users to subscribe to events of interest and be notified immediately after an event update. The application is built across platforms (web, Desktop, Android, IOS) so that students could view events information from different devices. The platform also adapts a containerized micro-service architecture which could be easily scaled to include more universities’ events and users or even events in the local area.

The game industry has traditionally been dominated by large corporations such as Steam, GOG, and Epic Games. Because of these giants, it is difficult for game developers to publish their games online for a reasonable price. In addition, the rising number of developers globally suggests the need for a flexible game platform. TIE perfectly fits into this category.

TIE provides a platform for both game publication and game play. Game developers can easily upload their games to TIE, similar to how people upload videos to YouTube. The uploaded games, like YouTube

videos, are displayed on the home page of TIE, or can also be searched for to play. These games are in web compatible format HTML/CSS/JavaScript and utilize templates and APIs provided by TIE.

Game development has been a common aspiration for developers but at the same time it has a high entry barrier. TIE offers developers simple game development by using more friendly languages and a set of templates and APIs. Even novice developers can build a game in a short period of time and publish it to play with friends. Players will also benefit by having large numbers of games to play with their friends.

Everyone’s a critic, that’s the saying. We’re all born with a natural tendency to provide our opinions and insight into different human experiences. Edacious will allow users to release their inner critic in a private, simple, yet detailed approach to restaurant critiquing. We are proposing a mobile app that gives the user a thorough critiquing experience on their restaurant endeavours while keeping their opinion to them- selves. With a focus on user freedom, we want to allow a review to include a variety of metrics and tags that will keep the user’s journal descriptive and clean. The app would be released to both Android and iOS devices using Google’s leading-edge mobile development tool, Flutter. With collectable badges and restaurant promotions, we will give users incentives to discover or revisit excellent restaurants along their path. In addition, we want to enhance the excitement of exploring new nearby locations by providing personalized recommendations for their next food adventure. As a personal journaling package, Edacious will supply an improved experience from existing overly shallow and public critiquing formats such as Yelp or Google Reviews. Edacious can meet the mark by creating an app where the interface is both clean and intuitive, granting the user an ideal journaling experience.

Our survey indicates that there are many blockers preventing UW students from making new connections. Some are too busy with school. Some are afraid of approaching others. Others might lose connections when moving to a new city for Co-op. It is obvious that their social needs cannot be satisfied with current apps. Our app is designed to help them match with someone who has the same intention to lower the cost of making new connections between UW students. Besides, the matching results would be optimized by applying our matching algorithm which guarantees the matching quality.

Our application reduces the cost of approaching new friends because it limits users in one community such as the University of Waterloo. This creates a sense of safety and closeness, which makes it easier for discussion happens between matched pairs. Also, since the match is based on some common interests, there will be more drive for users to engage in talking.

We aim to deploy our first soft launch in early March. Through marketing on reddit and other venues we hope to attract active users quickly and initiate activities between matched pairs.

The initial public deployment will be in early March, 2019.

Canadian law mandates that owners and operators of trucks, construction vehicles and other heavy machinery complete a daily inspection log before they begin its use. These inspections are still commonly completed by pen and paper, a method inefficient in communicating vehicle status to management. Transition- ing to a digitized format of check- completion offers reduction in physical storage, versatility in completion platform (mobile, tablet, etc.), the ability to readily aggregate information for management, and the potential to augment records with new sources of information. Additionally, it would reduce the cost of regular paper booklet purchasing for every vehicle in a fleet. Unfortunately, there has yet to be a successful software application that addresses this need.

CircleChek is our solution to this problem. Our checklists vary by vehicle type, making inspection points specific down to the vehicle to increase accuracy of inspections and overall safety. The ability to add photos within individual reports helps communicate vehicle status beyond simple pen and paper solutions. We employ cloud syncing to maintain consistency between clients; management no longer needs to lose time collecting vehicle information or suffer communication delays with vehicles in remote locations–all vehicle information is aggregated directly to them. CircleChek is ideal for small- to large-sized companies that need to stay up-to-date with a multitude of vehicles’ statuses without the hassle of handling paperwork. Our daily inspections comply with the legal standards of the province of Ontario, and Canada-wide. In summary, our mobile application simplifies and speeds up daily inspections, making it easier for managers to track their vehicles across locations.

Initial deployment of CircleChek to a client company was done late in the fall term of 2018. The basic Android application was brought to the client for field testing. Feedback was mainly positive with an emphasis on design tweeks. Additionally, special interest was expressed in a cross-platform application (iOS and Android) and anticipated future backend features. Overall, CircleChek offered a more detailed checklist than market-purchasable booklets, aiding operators in performing more thorough daily inspections.