Meeting with Your TA

Description

By the Thursday of the third week, you must have a project approved, and should be ready to get working! At this time, you'll need to log into PACE and submit your schedule for the semester. Please be sure to make this as accurate as possible because once it's submitted, it can only be changed manually. Making a block of your schedule red means that you are unavailable during that time.

Once each person on your team has submitted their schedule, your TA will be able to easily check for available times to schedule a weekly meeting. Your TA should contact you, usually by the fourth week, via email, to set up a weekly meeting schedule at mutual convenience. During the first weekly meeting, your TA will assign your team a locker and a lab kit.

Weekly meetings with your TA are required and will be held throughout the entire semester until demonstrations are completed. Your TA is your project manager. The "homework" of the course consists of preparing for the weekly meetings. Your TA will evaluate your lab notebook each week, provide feedback, and recommend improvements. At each meeting you will be expected to present your progress since your last meeting, plans for the coming week, and any technical or administrative questions you need to discuss with your TA. You are expected to arrive on time and prepared to make good use of your time with your TA. Your TA may require that each team member to fill out the Progress Report Template and submit it to them prior to each weekly meeting.

Requirements and Grading

Attendance and participation in weekly meetings is required and will affect Teamwork and Lab Notebook scores. If you can't make it to a particular weekly meeting, it is your responsibility to inform your TA prior to the meeting time and set up an alternate time.

Submission and Deadlines

Your schedule must be submitted by the end of the third week of class and you will receive an email from your TA shortly after. Your first meeting with your TA should be during the fourth week of the semester.

Digitizing the Restaurant with Network-Enabled Smart Tables

Andrew Chen, Eric Ong, Can Zhou

Featured Project

# Students

Andrew Chen - andrew6

Eric Ong - eong3

Can Zhou - czhou34

# Problem:

The restaurant industry relies on relatively archaic methods of management and customer service. Internal restaurant computer systems are limited and rely on staff members to monitor customer status. Restaurants lack contact-free transactions for clientele.

# Solution Overview:

Our solution to this problem is to develop a standalone LAN restaurant network system to manage customer status and occupancy for restaurants without the need for personnel to monitor it manually. Along with this, to accommodate for contact-free interactions, we propose a system for payment methods. To address customer preferences, we will provide height accommodation built into the table for different types of people.

# Solution Components:

[Self-adjusting Customer Height Accommodation] - The table will be held up with a linear actuator, thus allowing for the overall height to be adjustable. The table will adjust its height accordingly to the customers’ heights once they sit down. We plan to make the table adjust the table’s height by measuring the distance between the bottom of the table with the customer’s knees when they are sitting down using ultrasonic sensors.

[NFC Payment and Card Reader Payment] - The table will have NFC reader and magstripe reader for contactless delivery. The payment data will be sent to the centralized hub for processing and confirmation.

[Table Pressure Sensor] - The status of a table will be gauged based on the amount of weight on the physical table itself. An occupied (or even just an unoccupied and dirty table) will be marked as such since the weight of excess food, water, plates, and whatever else the customer may bring will be measured by this pressure sensor.

[Computer Mesh Network] - We plan to create a mesh network of raspberry pi’s to track the status of tables in a restaurant. This network will communicate via some form of wireless communication (Wi-FI, bluetooth, or Zigbee).

# Criterion for Success:

This project seeks to create a solution in which restaurants can minimize customer interaction with features that accommodate individual needs, such as the height of the table and payment methods. This project will be considered successful with a working prototype that includes features that may be included in an actual restaurant setting.

Project Videos