Team NOCK with CS 189 instructors Profs. Krintz and Sherwood

KC (Kinect Cameraman), an autonomous system consisting of a servo-controlled Microsoft Kinect mounted on a mobile robotics platform, won the “Best Computer Science Capstone Project Award” at the CS 189, ECE 189, and ECE 188 Senior Project Presentation Day. Team members Kenneth Bedolla (lead), Andres Barajas, Roy Handelsman and Lane Meier took home the $500 award funded by the Hass Endowment for their project at the June 7th Capstone Senior Project Presentation Event.

The team uses a Microsoft Kinect 3D imaging sensor, controlled by a servo, attached to a mobile robotics platform, to allow for more fluid interaction. The Kinect’s limited field of vision is a problem in all but the smallest rooms and the robot removes the small room restriction by unobtrusively following the user like a cameraman would follow an actor. NOCK’s team partner was the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and the project was mentored by JPL Applications Software Engineer, Victor Luo.

The Capstone project gives Computer Science and Computer Engineering students the opportunity to put their education into practice. Students, working in teams, design and engineer innovative software systems using cutting-edge technologies and architectures to tackle problems “donated” by industry leaders. The projects span a wide variety of areas including distributed computing, networking, mobile computing, embedded systems, data mining, and security.

You can read more about the other amazing projects at the Computer Science Capstone and the 2012 Computer Engineering Capstone Projects web pages.