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Held weekly in the senior design lab (ECEB 2070/2072). NOTE:

There are no office hours during the weeks of board reviews or final demos.

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Fall 2025 Instructors

Name Area
Prof. Arne Fliflet (Instructor)
3056
afliflet@illinois.edu		 microwave generation and applications
Prof. Viktor Gruev (Instructor)

vgruev@illinois.edu
Prof. Rakesh Kumar (Instructor)

rakeshk@illinois.edu
Prof. Michael Oelze (Instructor)
ECEB 2056
oelze@illinois.edu		 Biomedical Imaging, Acoustics, Nondestructive Testing
Prof. Cunjiang Yu (Instructor)

cunjiang@illinois.edu
Haocheng Bill Yang (TA)

hy38@illinois.edu
Gayatri Chandran (TA)

gpc4@illinois.edu		 Super-resolution imaging, force microscopy, nanoscale light-matter interactions
Shengkun Cui (TA)

scui8@illinois.edu
Shiyuan Duan (TA)

sduan9@illinois.edu
Lukas Dumasius (TA)

lukasd2@illinois.edu
Jason Jung (TA)

jasondj2@illinois.edu		 Imaging Systems, Circuit design, Signal Processing, Computer Vision
Shengyan Liu (TA)

sl90@illinois.edu
Wesley Pang (TA)

qpang2@illinois.edu
Rishik Sathua (TA)

rsathua2@illinois.edu
Wenjing Song (TA)

ws33@illinois.edu
Eric Tang (TA)

leweit2@illinois.edu		 IC, EM, proficient with PCB and soldering
Weiman Yan (TA)

weimany2@illinois.edu
Jason Zhang (TA)

zekaiz2@illinois.edu		 AR, Robot and human interactions
Zhuoer Zhang (TA)

zhuoer3@illinois.edu
Frey Zhao (TA)

yifeiz10@illinois.edu

Other Important People

https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/staff

Control System and User Interface for Hydraulic Bike

Iain Brearton

Featured Project

Parker-Hannifin, a fluid power systems company, hosts an annual competition for the design of a chainless bicycle. A MechSE senior design team of mechanical engineers have created a hydraulic circuit with electromechanical valves, but need a control system, user interface, and electrical power for their system. The user would be able to choose between several operating modes (fluid paths), listed at the end.

My solution to this problem is a custom-designed control system and user interface. Based on sensor feedback and user inputs, the system would change operating modes (fluid paths). Additionally, the system could be improved to suggest the best operating mode by implementing a PI or PID controller. The system would not change modes without user interaction due to safety - previous years' bicycles have gone faster than 20mph.

Previous approaches to this problem have usually not included an electrical engineer. As a result, several teams have historically used commercially-available systems such as Parker's IQAN system (link below) or discrete logic due to a lack of technical knowledge (link below). Apart from these two examples, very little public documentation exists on the electrical control systems used by previous competitors, but I believe that designing a control system and user interface from scratch will be a unique and new approach to controlling the hydraulic system.

I am aiming for a 1-person team as there are 6 MechSE counterparts. I emailed Professor Carney on 10/3/14 and he thought the general concept was acceptable.

Operating modes, simplified:

Direct drive (rider's pedaling power goes directly to hydraulic motor)

Coasting (no power input, motor input and output "shorted")

Charge accumulators (store energy in expanding rubber balloons)

Discharge accumulators (use stored energy to supply power to motor)

Regenerative braking (use motor energy to charge accumulators)

Download Competition Specs: https://uofi.box.com/shared/static/gst4s78tcdmfnwpjmf9hkvuzlu8jf771.pdf

Team using IQAN system (top right corner): https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/InfoFor/CurrentStudents/SeniorProjects/2012/GeskeLamneckSparenbergEtAl

Team using discrete logic (page 19): http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/86206/ME450?sequence=1