Emily Driscoll
Paul Muller

The High Tech Tools and Toys Laboratory (HTTTL) is a teaching and student project laboratory supporting simulations and physical experiments in a variety of subsurface sensing problems. Introductory experiments address imaging hardware (optical and acoustic) and the use of imaging to control a larger system for inspection, recognition or control. More advanced experiments explore subsurface image collection (How can we image an object below the surface?), object detection (Is there a tissue mass, reduced fluid flow in an artery, or dense object present in this image?), or object recognition (Is that a cancerous/benign mass; a normal/obstructed artery; a rock/land mine?) One goal of the HTTTL is to make these experiments more widely available to teachers and students.

Research Activities

The teacher will work with Prof. Ruane on at least two experiments of mutual interest in the HTTTL. The objective will be to define an economical set of hardware and software for the experiments, create a friendly user interface for the student, and prepare source materials to accompany the experiments. The teacher will learn fundamentals of digital image processing, imaging and interface hardware, and software tools including MATLAB and LabVIEW. Open source software, run-time modules (with free environments), and web-accessible experiments will be explored as cost control measures.