Connections: The newsletter for Cal Poly's Electrical Engineering Department, Summer 2021

CONNECTIONS Electrical Engineering Department • Cal Poly College of Engineering • Summer 2021

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

• Adaptive wheelchair includes image recognition • EE summer undergraduate research projects recognized • Ongoing mars rover project started as senior project • EE alum Amman Asfaw was moved to be an activist

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message from the INTERIM CO-chair Dale Dolan If you’re like me, you were relieved to see the return of caps and gowns to the Spanos Stadium this June.

Normally a testament to the hard work students have put into their studies, this year’s in-person graduation ceremonies also represented the success the entire campus has had in responding to a global pandemic. So I’d like to congratulate students, faculty and staff for a job well done.

And, of course, we had excellent financial support, which allowed us to provide students the tools needed to conduct Learn by Doing work virtually.

But Covid-19 was just one of the extraordinary challenges students faced since our last newsletter. Even though Amman Asfaw’s participation in the summer of 2020 protests led to a misdemeanor charge he is currently contesting, he continued to be a leader, heading the National Society of Black Engineers through a historic year and leading the City of San Luis Obispo’s first ever diversity task force.

Profiled here, his efforts were rewarded with an Outstanding Service Award from Dean Fleischer during the college’s year-end meeting.

During that same gathering, EE’s Lucas Chang was one of two CENG students awarded with the Academic Excellence Award for best grades.

All remarkable achievements for any year.

As you’ll see in this newsletter, everyone adapted remarkably well to the crisis. Even though all of the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Program projects were conducted virtually, with faculty and sponsor support, we were able to achieve amazing things, adding a new way of conducting research to student skillsets.

As we plan to return to campus 100 percent in the fall, the success of these students through difficult times has significantly raised the bar for those who will follow.

At the same time, some campus activity returned on a limited basis, and our students took great advantage of that. Two senior projects you’ll read about here, which involved electrical engineering students, were featured on TV news channels nationwide.

Dale Dolan

On the cover Electrical engineering student Josh Simpson, second from right, and Caitlin Tang-Hornbuckle speak to AmpSurf founder Dana Cummings, as he tests their all-terrain adaptive wheelchair. See Page 6

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I can’t wait to see what we’ll celebrate at next year’s graduation.

Interim Co-Chair, Electrical Engineering

EE summer undergraduate research projects recognized Two electrical engineering projects — one improving the efficiency of Cal Poly’s solar farm and another focused on the resiliency and security of power systems — were recognized by a 3-judge panel at the end of the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP).

SURP pairs newer students with faculty mentors to conduct relevant, real-world research over the summer. The 2020 SURP program, conducted virtually due to the pandemic, included 44 research projects that took place over eight weeks. After the SURP Symposium in the fall, the panel named 10 notable projects.

One of the notable electrical engineering projects, mentored by Dale Dolan, featured mechanical engineering student Shayla Schoensee researching how to combat power production losses at the Cal Poly solar farm. At the end of her project, she concluded that adjusting the tilt of some of the panels at nighttime resulted in less soiling, which leads to more power.

Annie Joss is working on a project mentored by EE professor Joseph Callenes-Sloan to study carbon-neutral energy sources.

“I was interested in this project as I am interested in renewable energy,” Schoensee said. “This project was also cool because it had potential to and did directly improve the renewable energy production for Cal Poly.”

During the SURP program, she said, she learned to find and analyze credible sources to gain information in helping solve problems.

“As a mechanical engineer I also learned a lot about the wind loading of solar panels and the trade-offs between static and dynamic failures and tilt angle,” she said.

The other notable project focused on resiliency and security in power systems of the future that will have increased distribution systems in contrast to centralized power plants. The project was mentored by Joseph Callenes-Sloan and sponsored by Northrop Grumman.

“Specifically, the students sought to redesign power systems that can better detect attacks and increase the difficulty for attackers to craft effective attacks,” Callenes-Sloan said.

Security is a significant problem for power systems and other critical infrastructures today, he added.

Shayla Schoensee, above, is researching how to combat power losses at the Cal Poly Solar Farm. Austin Grassbaugh, left, is working on carbon-neutral energy sources.

“Power grid attacks have the potential to cause significant disruptions and fatal consequences,” he said. “As power grids modernize, the attack surface and potential vulnerabilities for these systems is also increasing.

Attackers are also becoming more sophisticated, with new tools and resources.”

With extreme weather events, like California wildfires, increasing, it’s also important, Callenes-Sloan said, to study and implement new carbon-neutral energy sources — something that appealed to student Austin Grassbaugh.

“I was interested in the project because utilizing microgrids or distributed energy in general in the future can allow for cleaner energy consumption, which is really needed right now,” Grassbaugh said.

Project partner Annie Joss was drawn to learn more about how cybersecurity affects physical infrastructure.

“In SURP I got to experience the whole process of academic research,” said Joss, a computer engineering major. “We did a literature review, came up with an idea, created a framework and did simulations to test our approach, and wrote a paper detailing our results.”

Their research continued after the summer, and that paper was accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Cyber Security and Resilience.

Conducting research was especially beneficial for Grassbaugh, a former computer engineering student, who is now a biomedical engineering master’s student hoping to conduct research in either electrophysiology or computational neuroscience.

“I think the most useful part of me was learning the research process,” Grassbaugh said. “I feel like I am a lot better researcher now and am a lot more comfortable exploring topics through literature reviews.” n ee.calpoly.edu | 3

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To Space... and beyond

As lecturer Rich Murray looks on, computer engineering student Cameron Priest adjusts the setting on Herbie, a rover he worked on for his senior project.

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Ongoing Cal Poly rover project, inspired by NASA’s Curiosity, began as an EE Senior Project During the 2019 Project Expo, a team of electrical engineering students discussed its curious-looking robot, named Marvin, which was on display outside the Advanced Technologies Lab. “There’s a lot of talk about NASA’s next 2020 rover mission,” said Salvador Cortes Soancatl, one of the students. “So we want to get that hype started again.”

That upcoming mission, involving NASA’s Perseverance rover, certainly generated plenty of talk — from its dramatic “seven minutes of terror” landing on Mars to the stunning 360-degree photos it continues to transmit from the mysterious red planet. But it was a different rover that inspired the design of the Cal Poly senior project. And, three years after that Project Expo, Marvin continues its journey, thanks to lecturer and advisor Rich Murray and a rotating cast of Cal Poly students working on it.

Electrical engineering students and lecturer Rich Murray pose with the rover, then named Marvin, at the Project Expo in 2019. Pictured are, left to right, Karl Kohlsaat, Ryan Schouten, Rich Murray, Jorge Rodriguez , Salvador Cortes Soancatl. (Not pictured: Darius Animo)

“Year one, they built it, year two, they gave it the brains to move around, and this year, they’re working on the autonomous aspect,” Murray said.

“It is our intention to leverage this system for possible interest by SpaceX for a future actual ‘mini’ Mars rover,” Murray said.

The idea began when Murray noticed that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had shared designs for a rover.

A smaller rover would be much less expensive than NASA’s car-sized Curiosity to build and deliver into space. That cost difference would allow more agencies to build and launch rovers into space, or other planets, like Mars.

“I was online doing research and I saw a posting from JPL that they had just made their Mars rover Curiosity public and made it open source,” Murray said.

The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, is still working on the Martian planet, although slowing down a bit, recording images and investigating climate and geology. While space technology was once a heavily guarded secret, JPL’s decision to post design plans for a 6-wheel rover in 2018 made space education and innovation more accessible.

“Making it public and open source allows anyone to use it, learn, and leverage as they wish,” Murray said.

So for the next three years, Murray had his students work on the rover, improving it in stages. Initially, the aim was mostly educational, said Cortes Soancatl, who now works as an engineer at Boeing.

“We want to take this to local high schools and middle schools,” he said at the expo. “They can get motivated in the space industry and space in general.”

But as innovation and progress has continued, future plans have since become more ambitious.

“There’s a lot to do, but we are on a path beyond educational curiosity,” Murray said.

Each year, students get to rename the rover, Murray said. This year, computer engineering students worked on newly renamed Herbie’s autonomous features — including a vision system — and a new exoskeleton, created with an on campus 3D printer, that would move more smoothly and robustly.

“The original design hardware from NASA, we thought, was not optimal,” said CPE student Ryan Ozawa, who focused on the new, more agile frame and autonomous calibration.

In addition to added mission capability, the next project group(s), Murray said, will change the mechanical system that is now 3D printed plastic and Carbon fiber to 3D printed Titanium or Stainless Steel. The electrical system looks to migrate to radiation hardened components and redundant systems.

“Now it could be space worthy,” he said. n

Murray’s students are already working on the next rover design, which will include a mechanical arm and an advanced missions system. ee.calpoly.edu | 5

COVER

Rolling Along

Electrical engineering student Josh Simpson, right, and Lauren Knott work on their all-terrain adaptive wheelchair.

EE student helps create adaptive wheelchair that includes image recognition and remote control

With local media waiting, a problem suddenly occurred with the adaptive beach wheelchair Josh Simpson’s team had designed and manufactured.

The chair, perched on a platform at Pismo Beach, wasn’t moving, causing a brief panic that most observers didn’t even notice.

After a quick fix, the chair was back in action. And, as news cameras rolled, a participant in the nonprofit AmpSurf’s camp successfully traveled on the chair to the water’s edge, two surfboards making the trip with her.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness — why is it not working?’” Simpson recalled.

‘I had it working, and now it’s not!’”

“It’s absolutely terrifying and absolutely relieving all at the same time,” said Caitlin Tang-Hornbuckle, a materials engineering student, after seeing the chair work. “It’s really satisfying knowing, ‘Hey, I did that thing!’”

As an engineering student, however, Simpson was trained to anticipate the unexpected. So he calmly went to work.

Cal Poly engineering students have pursued multiple senior projects aimed at benefitting AmpSurf, which promotes adaptive surf therapy.

“I knew I’d be able to pop out my laptop and solve some problems on the fly if I needed to,” said the electrical engineering student, who graduated the next day. “But there were crossed fingers.”

“These projects are great for the students because they can make a huge impact on other peoples lives, and that’s very motivating for the students, and it really gives them that real world experience that we value

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at Cal Poly,” said Jim Widmann, chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department.

had classes in this stuff,” said team member Lauren Knott, an industrial engineering major. “So we’re all just trying to learn together.”

As the electrical engineering representative of the Waverollers — an interdisciplinary team creating the wheelchair as a senior project — Simpson focused on the chair’s electronics. One unique electronics feature would allow a surfer in the water to use an app to control the chair back on the beach.

They tested it during VetSurf, an AmpSurf camp, the day before graduation. Not only was it the first time the client would see the chair, but the demonstration would also be captured by two local news stations and the local public radio news.

“We have a little mini computer in the back, and we’re interfacing with the motor controllers,” Simpson said. “And the mini computer is receiving signals from the user’s iPod Touch over a long-range transmitter.

And it gets those commands, and then it sends those commands to the motors and tells it to move.”

“In the past week, we were putting in 8-hour days to get this thing to work,” Simpson said.

Not only did the chair make it to the beach, but mechanical engineering student Seth Yakel was able to control it while floating on a surfboard in the water.

The chair also includes image recognition, he added, to ensure the riderless chair doesn’t hit someone on the beach.

After the successful test, Simpson stood in the Pismo Beach sand, relieved, as waves continued to crash nearby.

“When it sees a person, it will stop,” Simpson said. “And when the person’s gone, it will keep going.”

Afterward, the project would receive a final boost. A piece aired by San Luis Obispo news station KSBY was picked up and aired in several markets coast-to-coast, including Chicago; Anchorage, Alaska; Louisville, Kentucky; San Antonio, Texas; Bangor, Maine and Wichita, Kansas.

Integrating all the systems together was the toughest part of the project, Simpson said. And while Simpson performed the coding work by himself, the entire team worked on the electrical and manufacturing aspects.

“Our team did a really good job, and it was such a fun project to work on,” Simpson said. n

“We’re doing things none of us have ever done before — none of us have

Members of the adaptive wheelchair team pose with Mechanical Engineering Department Chair Jim Widmann (far right).

Team members include, left to right, Lauren Knott, Caitlin Tang-Hornbuckle, Josh Simpson, and Seth Yakel.

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No regrets Electrical engineering graduate Amman Asfaw was moved to become an activist and leader

After completing his collegiate studies amid a whirlwind of achievements and controversy, Amman Asfaw began a list of his proudest accomplishments at Cal Poly.

The first item he wrote was, “I stayed happy.” And his final one, #17, was, “I got in good trouble!”

“Good trouble,” a phrase popularized by the late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, is something Asfaw got into when he decided he could no longer remain apolitical in the face of systemic racism in the United States.

But even as his newfound activism resulted in court dates and legal briefs, Asfaw continued to lead, promoting diversity for the city of San Luis Obispo and heading the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) on campus, which was elevated to new heights during his tenure as president.

“Since May (of 2020), there has been a shift of the world’s mass conscience and moral compass, initiated by America: more civic duty and less idle stagnation; more mutual aid and less selfish greed; more justice and less corruption,” Asfaw said after joining the City of San Luis Obispo’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force om the fall of 2020. “And I acknowledge I am a part of that mass conscience shift, which encouraged me to embrace applying to SLO’s DE&I task force.”

Asfaw’s collegiate studies ended with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and an Outstanding Service Award for Contributions to the Community, presented during the College of Engineering’s College-wide meeting. But his moral compass came years earlier as a youth in Thousand Oaks, CA. Electrical engineering graduate Amman Asfaw left a legacy of achievement at Cal Poly as a student, activist and leader.

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“The biggest impact my parents have had on me is helping me better understand right from wrong,” he said. “My dad would always tell me, ‘If you do nice things for people, they will do nice things for you.’”

As a teen, he volunteered at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, where he first learned that younger people look up to him.

“I enjoy working with the next generation — whoever’s up next,” he said. “There’s just something about me that enjoyed that.”

At Cal Poly, he quickly became involved in leadership at NSBE, culminating with his serving as president. During that time, he helped arrange a live, streaming interview from space with NASA astronaut and Cal Poly alumnus Victor Glover. During his leadership, Cal Poly’s NSBE also won Small Chapter of the Year Award — the first time in the club’s 47-year history.

“We want to ignite the flame in future culturally responsible engineers,” Asfaw said at the time. “And then once that flame is ignited, we want to make sure they can light other people’s flames and pass on the torch.”

Amman Asfaw’s proudest achievements at Cal Poly: 1 I stayed happy 2 I have no regrets 3 I made my parents proud 4 I apparently inspired others 5 I never failed a class!

6 I went from 2.7 to 3.0 undergraduate

GPA, then to 3.6 graduate GPA! 7 I unapologetically used ALL available resources 8 I helped build up NSBE into a National

Chapter of the Year 9 I managed two part-time jobs as an underclassman 10 I balanced participation with my campus

and city 11 I studied abroad before the pandemic

(10 countries visited) 12 I travelled domestically before the

pandemic (11 U.S. states visited) 13 I started my own LLC for fun (www.amman.win) 14 I am graduating with < $25,000 of debt 15 I earned $30,000 in scholarships from

14 different organizations since 2016 16 I have no kids... yet 17 I got in good trouble!

As he led NSBE, he also led the city of San Luis Obispo’s task force as its chairperson – and only student representative. After meeting weekly during the fall of 2020, the task force submitted a 23-page report to the city council, citing programs, policies and initiatives to welcome a diverse community and reduce barriers of systemic racism and discrimination.

The council adopted all of the recommendations — a testament to Asfaw’s leadership.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he ultimately ended up as a business and thought leader in Silicon Valley,” Cal Poly Electrical Engineering Professor Andrew Danowitz told the San Luis Obispo Tribune, which published a profile of Asfaw this spring. “He could also be a great engineering educator, inspiring new generations of students to find solutions to society’s problems. I also imagine he could go into politics and work directly to serve his fellow citizens.”

Danowitz had worked with Asfaw on research that questioned the use of technical terms “slave” and “master” as well as “female-male” and “blacklist-whitelist.” The research was published and presented at the American Society for Engineering Education’s annual conference.

(Asfaw has also written columns titled, Gen Z(eal), for the American Society of Engineering Educations’ Prism Magazine.)

Now that he has graduated, Asfaw is beginning his career as an engineer for a startup in the Bay Area.

“It’s quite an R&D lab, but I feel Cal Poly Engineering labs prepared me well,” he said.

Meanwhile, he is planning to self publish a book/autoethnography about his college experiences that he hopes will inspire others.

But his time in San Luis Obispo isn’t over just yet.

After the murder of George Floyd and other police-related killings of Black people Asfaw was one of many who took to the streets of San Luis Obispo to protest on July 21, 2020.

After protesters marched through downtown and blocked Highway 101, he was eventually charged with a single misdemeanor false imprisonment for sitting in front of a sedan on Monterey Street, whose driver told marchers he just wanted to go home.

While his court case serves as a reminder that not all activism will be universally praised, Asfaw has no plans to quit.

“Of course, I plan to stay active on social justice issues,” he said.

He hopes his book will represent another contribution to society. He is invested in the movement to stop the genocide and famine in Tigray, a state in Ethiopia, where his family and ancestors are from. And, he said, he plans to be vindicated in his court case.

While he prefers not to talk much about his case while its pending, the lessons of his parents — knowing how to distinguish right from wrong — influenced #2, #3 and #4 on his list of accomplishments: I have no regrets I made my parents proud I apparently inspired others “Despite being dragged into the courts, exercising my first amendment right to peaceably assemble was necessary because it aimed to set at liberty those who are oppressed,” he said before quoting Attallah Shabazz, artist, public speaker and daughter of Malcom X and Betty Shabazz.

“Who is to blame when our ‘inherent idealism yearns to bridge ignorance with insight and despondency with hope?’”n

ee.calpoly.edu | 9

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TOP OF THE CLASS

LUCAS CHANG EARNS ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE AWARD During his undergraduate studies, Lucas Chang was two Aminuses from perfection.

While that’s a consistent record of success, Chang said the key to his achievement was actually failure.

“I’ve made, and still make, plenty of mistakes, which is okay as long as I learn from it and move on,” he said. “I have a lot of anxiety around failing to reach my goals, and this viewpoint helped me think about failures as an opportunity to grow.”

Chang, who recently earned his electrical engineering degree, was one of two students from the College of Engineering awarded the annual Academic Excellence Award for academic performance.

Chang chose to study electrical engineering because he enjoyed the electricity and magnetism aspects of his high school physics class — “and I happened to like EE enough to stick with it for four years.”

He did expand his skillset by pursuing a computer science minor. But what he liked most about Cal Poly was the friendships he formed.

“Without my friends, Cal Poly would have just been a 4-year blur of studying, but now I have many fond memories to look back on,” he said. “I can’t thank them enough for dragging me out when I said I couldn’t go because I had to study.”

He’s currently working full-time as a hardware development engineer for Amazon Lab 126, but his career goals include titles such as project manager, senior engineer, director, CEO, and more.

“It’s really all up in the air,” he said. “Too much can change too quickly, and I’m a little fish that just got thrown into the ocean after getting used to my pond. My goal is to learn as much as I can in my new environment, and re-evaluate my goals when I learn more about my own interests.” n

Lucas Chang was recently awarded the annual Academic Excellence Award for academic performance.

“Without my friends, Cal Poly would have just been a 4-year blur of studying, but now I have many fond memories to look back on.”

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turning up the power EE students will work to improve power company performance by professors Ali Shaban and Ahmad Nafisi.

With a $295,000 grant from San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), Cal Poly electrical engineering students will help the power company improve reliability and cost effectiveness.

Professor Taufik acted as the principal investigator for the grant, which will entail using SDG&E’s distribution system analysis software to perform reliability analysis using computational models.

Professor Taufik secured a grant that will help EE students study how to help power companies improve realiability.

Professors Majid Poshtan and Ali Dehghan-Banadaki served as co-PI’s to the project, which was also aided

The main body of the analysis work will, with training, be accomplished by upper division electrical engineering students under direct supervision of EE faculty. Work will include assessing existing reliability of distribution circuits, identifying and prioritizing cost-effective projects for reliability improvement, estimating expected reliability at circuit and protection/switching zone level and conducting benefit cost analysis. n

Retirement EE Department says goodbye to retiring faculty and staff Four familiar faces in the Electrical Engineering Department are retiring. The retiring faculty include professor David Braun and lecturer Mostafa Chinichian while departing staff members include Jaime Carmo and Lani Woods.

David Braun

Mostafa Chinichian

After earning his PhD from UC Santa Barbara, Braun performed his post-doc work at UC Santa Barbara and Philips Research before joining Cal Poly in 1996. At Cal Poly, he worked on semiconducting polymers for display applications and taught courses in electronics, solid-state electronics, polymer electronics and sustainability.

Chinichian, who earned his doctorate at Florida Institute of Technology, began his teaching career at Purdue University before joining the faculty at Cal Poly in 1990. He has published 12 papers, and his research interests included digital and adaptive filters and digital signal processing. In 1995, he received a Summer Research Program Fellowship at Griffiss Air Force Base Laboratory in Rome, New York, and in 1997 he was awarded a NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology to conduct research on turbo coding and optical channels.

continue to work in San Marcos for nearly 14 years before joining Cal Poly in 2007.

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from CSU San Marcos, Woods, an administrative analyst, went to work for her alma mater as an administrative coordinator and would

Carmo, an equipment technician, started working in the Electrical Engineering Department in 1987, making him one of the longer serving veterans of the department. n

Lanii Woods

Jaime Carmo

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College of Engineering Electrical Engineering Department 1 Grand Avenue San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

EE’s BAY Area bowlers

Engineering students work with a model of the solar panel tracker used at the Cal Poly Gold Tree Solar Farm for their 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Program project. The goal of the project is to optimize the solar farm’s energy generation.

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