C2SMART Participates in NYU Research Exhibition

May 6, 2022May 7, 2023Molly

On Friday, April 29, NYU Tandon held its annual Research Excellence Exhibit, a public event that features exhibits that illustrate the scope of engineering and the applied sciences — and their potential for improving the world. The day-long program provides faculty and students with a platform to showcase the high-caliber, innovative work they’re doing. This year, four projects were selected to represent C2SMART at the Exhibit.

#Congratulations to our winning teams at the Research Excellence Exhibit! 3rd place is "FloodNet: Realtime Urban Flood Sensing," 2nd is "Plasma Electrolysis towards Decarbonization," and 1st is "Walking Robot: Balance Stability & Power Consumption" #NYUTandonMade pic.twitter.com/u2z52GvSyw
— NYU Tandon (@nyutandon) April 29, 2022

🗽 Freight Transportation and Routing App for New York City, led by researchers Haggai Davis III and Hector Landes, showcased a truck routing app designed with Professor Joseph Chow to assist NYCDOT dynamically route trucks towards truck routes and away from potential barriers like bridges or overhangs–this represents a key challenge in daily urban freight operations in New York City. The team presented both web and mobile versions of the app to compare outputted routes against similar routes in Google Maps to highlight route differences. The team also showcased freight data visualizations, synthesizing multiple NYC social and economic datasets and applying state-of-the-art freight modeling analysis to reveal insights about how different types of freight enter and move throughout the city.

🚧 Urban ad-hoc roadway construction zones: Human worker behavior evaluation towards safety notifications, led by researcher Dan Lu, showcased a virtual reality headset and biometric sensors along with a predeveloped set of VR scenarios representing mobile construction work zones. Participants experienced a virtual work zone and were tasked with performing simple construction tasks in VR while virtual cars move towards, around, and sometimes crash into their virtual work zone. These technologies have been produced as part of Dan and Professor Semiha Ergan’s USDOT-funded project to safely assess the effectiveness of work

zone safety notification systems through wearable sensors and realistic representations of work zones in virtual reality.

🚲 Safe Bike Equity: Can Cycling Become the Great Equalizer?, led by researcher Suzana Duran Bernardes and Vikas Mali exhibited their work to improve cycling safety and equity. This showcase presented a bicycle fitted with a customized multi-sensor device designed by the research group using a mounted Rasberry Pi. The bike sensors are able to collect GPS coordinates, speed, distance to obstacles, acceleration and position angle data, filling a data gap for researchers and agencies looking to improve the safety and equity of cycling. The exhibit summarized findings from use cases, and how these relate to safety and spatial equity, using map visulizations of the current shared Citibike system in NYC.

FloodNet: Realtime Urban Flood Sensing, led by researchers Praneeth Challagonda, Jatin Palchuri and Charlie Mydlarz, won third place at the Exhibit. Launched in 2020, the project developed a publicly-accessible platform that provides real-time flood information through revolutionary mounted sensors capable of overcoming common sensor challenges (including durability, connectivity, and power) to detect the presence of water. The sensors are designed to help cities respond to emergencies by providing real-time information on flood depth, frequency, and duration.