Abstract
For my technical capstone project, our group is building a robot used in UVA’s undergraduate electrical engineering courses for teaching students. Our customer, Professor Delong, plans to teach a class based on this robot. In the class, students can experience hands-on learning by programming the robot to do a variety of tasks, like having the robot follow a line. The class will replace the Introduction to Embedded Computing Systems class that is currently available, where students also program a microcontroller in a variety of different ways, but due to physical limitations in hardware, the only output they see is a LED blinking. By each possessing a robot designed specifically for the curriculum, students can more effectively engage in embedded application exercises. Our robot will allow students to see their application interact with the real world. For instance, they can set the motors on the robot to different speeds or use readings from infrared sensors to detect the distance of objects away from the robot.
To provide the students with a functional robot within the one semester duration of our capstone, we chose to repurpose the circuit board design of an existing robot. By modifying the design of the circuit board, we added some of our own features like a reflectance sensor under the robot that enables line following activities. We also designed an adapter circuit board, which allows our robot to be controlled by two microcontroller types, one made by Texas Instruments, and one made by STM. This gives the instructors more flexibility over which microcontroller they choose to teach with. Additionally, we wrote all the software drivers necessary for each microcontroller to interact with the sensors and motors on the robot. Our software library will be platform agnostic, meaning students can use the same code to program the robot regardless of which microcontroller they are using. By providing these features, we hope that students will have a productive and enjoyable experience as they learn the fundamentals of embedded programming.
In my STS thesis, I examine how different relevant social groups shaped the development of streaming piracy. Although peer-to-peer file-sharing was the main means of piracy in the early 2000s, modern-day piracy has been dominated by illegal streaming. After comparing the technological and experiential benefits of streaming to torrenting, it is clear why modern users prefer streaming over torrenting. The dominance of illegal streaming has also led to a resurgence in the popularity of piracy, which I argue has enhanced the free access to media and transfer of ideas in online spaces. Piracy broadened the perspectives of consumers by granting them access to niche, international content. It also serves as a sampling method where consumers may initially pirate content and later purchase the full product. Based on my analysis, the media industry should embrace piracy as a means of driving up demand for their products rather than simply viewing it as a threat to their profits.
