(May 30, 2019) -- The UTSA Tech Symposium winning team recently competed and won in a regional Electrical and Computer Engineering senior design competition sponsored by UT Dallas. Presented by Würth Elektronik, the inaugural ExCEllence in Senior Design showcase brought the top-rated university design teams in the southwest to face off against one other and be judged on their design accomplishments and presentations. Each school could only select one senior design team, their highest rated, to participate in this competition.
Allen Herrera, Rembrandt Bukowski, Miles Martinez, and Justice Montes represented UTSA and won the Entrepreneurial Award for their presentation, as determined by a panel of 16 judges selected from various local companies in Dallas. The projects are the culmination of the engineering undergraduate studies, to apply the knowledge and skills they have accumulated throughout their programs to design, develop, and implement innovative and relevant engineering products in their last and senior year.
>> Watch the UTSA Daedalus Automatic Weapon Detection System presentation.
The team decided to focus on detecting concealed and unconcealed weaponry using real-time surveillance footage, infrared images and applying deep learning analytics. This direction was reached in collaboration with Raymond Choo, UTSA associate professor of information systems and cybersecurity and Cloud Technology Endowed Professor, and an NSA Texas team with whom Choo had been collaborating. The NSA Texas team provided ongoing mentorship and advised them throughout the project life cycle. This relationship was made possible by the signing of a CRADA between the NSA with UT System last year.
Herrera, Bukowski, Martinez and Montes designed and built a working prototype of an Automatic Weapon Detection System (AWDS) they called Daedalus. In Greek mythology, Daedalus, father of Icarus, was an inventor and craftsman and was deemed the original innovator.
Daedalus is a security package that can automatically detect concealed and unconcealed weapons using current CCTV technology and an infrared (IR) camera sensor. Once a weapon is detected, an alert with the image and video is streamed to a mobile application reducing response time and improving situational awareness. Potential customer segments include law enforcement, security departments in schools, airports and other public areas.
“It can be very chaotic during an active shooting. By identifying credible threats in real-time, our solution can save seconds, and possibly minutes, which is critical to saving lives in this type of situation,” said Herrera at a recent demonstration of their technology at the UTSA National Security Collaboration Center.
Future plans for Daedalus are being discussed. Other modules and functionalities are under consideration while facial recognition can also be implemented within the system. With this first phase, the system may prove to be more cost effective than other available solutions on the market currently. With positive feedback and suggestions from NSCC partner ARL South Cyber, the future is bright for Daedalus.
The team graduates this semester: Herrera, Bukowski and Montes are off to graduate school at UTSA while Martinez has already secured a position at AT&T in Dallas.
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Join the PEACE Center and Wellbeing Services for Denim Day, a day of learning about the importance of consent and why we wear denim on the last Wednesday of the month each April during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Stop by our Denim Day display to take a photo in front of our Denim Wall, spin the "Is It Consent?" Wheel, and get a Concha or goodie.
Student Union Window Lounge, Main CampusLearn to use Zotero®, a citation manager that can help you store and organize citations you find during your research. Zotero can generate bibliographies in various styles, insert in-text citations and allow you to share sources with collaborators.
Virtual EventThis event will acknowledge graduating seniors from the McNair Scholars program at UTSA before inducting the new cohort of scholars into the program.
North Paseo Building (NPB 5.140), Main CampusAt this memorable celebration, UTSA graduates will be introduced one-by-one to cross the stage and accept their doctoral degrees.
Arts Building Recital Hall, Main CampusRoadrunner Walk is an event for graduating students to have a memorable walk on campus to celebrate an important milestone and their achievements. Graduates will walk along the Paseo while being celebrated by the UTSA community, friends, and family members.
Student Union Paseo, Main CampusCelebrate the accomplishments of College of Education and Human Development, College for Health, Community and Policy, College of Sciences and University College.
Alamodome, 100 Montana St.Celebrate the accomplishments of Alvarez College of Business, College of Liberal and Fine Arts and Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design.
Alamodome, 100 Montana St.The University of Texas at San Antonio is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge through research and discovery, teaching and learning, community engagement and public service. As an institution of access and excellence, UTSA embraces multicultural traditions and serves as a center for intellectual and creative resources as well as a catalyst for socioeconomic development and the commercialization of intellectual property - for Texas, the nation and the world.
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UTSA is a proud Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) as designated by the U.S. Department of Education .
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