Who knew free pizza could change the world for the visually impaired?

It hasn’t happened yet, but four Iowa State computer engineering students might be on the way to doing just that.

Roger Bentley, a computer engineering advisor at Iowa State, sent an e-mail to his students early in the spring semester telling them that a representative from Microsoft Corporation would be on campus to give an overview of the company’s Windows Embedded Student Challenge. Bentley mentioned free pizza in the e-mail and David Lawson, a senior, figured that was reason enough to see what the contest was all about.

While free pizza might have been the hook that got Lawson to attend the presentation, it was the contest that reeled him in.

After a few months of hard work on a project that might someday help blind people “see” their surroundings, Lawson (McHenry, Illinois) and his teammates—Adam Mishler (Big Lake, Minnesota), Andrew Riha (Cresco, Iowa), and Mike Schmitt (Cresco, Iowa)—are preparing for an all-expense-paid trip to Redmond, Washington, June 16–18. The group’s entry was one of only 30 such projects that advanced to the final round of Microsoft’s competition, for which more than 250 teams submitted work.

The contest, run in association with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Computer Society International Design Competition, invites undergraduates to devise a computer-based system that solves a real-world problem. The teams, made up of four students and one faculty mentor, were challenged to design, implement, and document a working prototype based on this year’s theme, Going Beyond the Boundaries.
 
Entrants were encouraged to be creative with their ideas and were free to choose their own subject, with the stipulation that the prototype had to be used in a real-world application, such as in a home, automobile, hospital, or office.

“Originally it sounded like it would fit with my senior design project on embedded systems,” Lawson says, “so I called Mike (Schmitt) after that meeting to see if he wanted to work on it with me.”

At first, Schmitt said no, thinking his schedule was already full enough. Later, after Mishler and Riha signed on, the group went to Diane Rover, a College of Engineering associate dean who was teaching a graduate-level embedded systems class that three of the students were taking. They talked with Rover about the project, explaining how they could incorporate the work for the contest into assignments for class.

“We told Dr. Rover that we’d like to do it, but we couldn’t do it as a total extracurricular project because we didn’t have the time,” Mishler explains. “We knew if we could apply some of this project to the class requirements, then it would definitely be something that we could do and we knew it would be beneficial.”

The group made a solid argument and Rover gave her blessing. “Since a design project is part of my class,” she says, “it was an ideal situation.” 

Schmitt then decided to get involved, too, completing the team.

To come up with an idea on a product, the group got together for several brainstorming sessions. One of the first ideas came from Riha, who suggested a GPS guidance system for a blind person. But the foursome learned there was already a similar commercial product available, and since originality is a top priority for the contest, the group kept looking. What they finally came up with is a product they call RADVIS, an acronym for Radio Auxiliary Detection for the Visually Impaired and Sighted.

RADVIS is an embedded device with an earpiece that will announce the name of a person who gets within a specified distance—eventually, team members hope, up to eight feet—of a visually impaired individual. The device is being designed for use in the workplace and will work especially well at locations where employees already carry Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags (similar to an electronic key) to get into a building or locked office.

Since many people already use RFID cards in the workplace, the group decided the technology would be ideal to employ. “We didn’t want to make a company buy new transponders for our system to work,” Mishler says. “We wanted it to fit in seamlessly with the rest of the employee population and we wanted to base it on an up-and-coming infrastructure in security access and controls.”

Riha adds that the visually impaired face social and professional disadvantages in the workplace because they don’t always know who is in close proximity. “This makes it difficult,” he offers, “to engage in small talk and greetings like, ‘Hi, Adam, how are you?’ when you’re nearby because those who are blind can’t see you.”

RADVIS, however, might someday eliminate that problem.

Lawson, Mishler, Riha, and Schmitt say if it wasn’t for the help of several people at the university and assistance from independent companies, the project would never have gotten off the ground. Texas Instruments, for one, provided the RFID readers free of charge, while SVOX Ltd.—an international company with offices in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S.—donated the text-to-speech engine. In an e-mail to both companies, the group said, “without your contributions to our team, the prototyping of this project would not have been possible.”

Rover adds that the team’s achievement went beyond the four members. Faculty and staff in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as Iowa State alumni, were all part of the success.

Each team member had a specific piece of the puzzle to work on. Schmitt was primarily responsible for the text-to-speech engine, while Riha worked on the documentation that was turned in to the judging committee. Those reports were an integral part in deciding which teams made the finals. 

Lawson was in charge of incorporating the RFID reader, which communicates over a serial port connection. “We had to figure out how to code the reader so it would allow us to work with input coming from and going to the serial port on the eBox,” Lawson explains. “It was a lot of trial and error, and looking at a lot of data.”

Mishler says he had his hands in a little bit of everything, but his main responsibility was building an image for the eBox, a piece that the group was required to use as part of the project.

But even with all the help and success, the group admitted the task took more time than anticipated. Problems along the way slowed the process several times. However, Rover says, taking care of those problems is what made this team stand out in the end and says ‘persistent’ might be the perfect word to describe the group.

“A key reason many teams don’t succeed is they break stride, so to speak, due to technical, time, or other pressures,” Rover offers. “This team kept up the pace for the whole semester and took advantage of the resources available to them.”

And even though Rover was more of a hands-off mentor, she was still invaluable, says Schmitt. From proofreading reports to assisting the group design their product in class, Rover was always available.

“She did a really good job of letting us do our part on our own,” Lawson says, “and then she was there when we needed her help.”

The team could only wait and wonder after they sent the final report to the judges at Microsoft. And while the group certainly hoped they would make the finals, it was something that three of the team members didn’t expect.

“I thought we had a good project, but I’ve never won anything in contests and I didn’t have high hopes,” Lawson admits.

Riha was the only one with confidence.

“Andrew gave me the impression that he thought we could win,” Lawson adds.

“I thought it was good from the get-go,” Schmitt says, “but it was Andrew who kept saying ‘We’re going to Redmond, we’re going to Redmond.’”

In the days before the winners were announced, even Riha’s confidence was waning. The announcement about finalists was two days later than the team expected, leading them to believe the worst.

“I was nervous, I have to admit,” Riha says. “I kept thinking ‘this is a worldwide competition,’ so there was no way to know what the other reports were like.”

When word finally came that the team was chosen for the trip to Redmond, the four students were overjoyed.

“To be one of the top 30 is pretty exciting,” Riha says.

Now the group is preparing for the finals, scheduled for June 16–18. After a dinner with other teams Thursday evening, it’s two full days of competition on Friday and Saturday. Each team will set up their presentations Friday in a trade-show type of environment with judges walking around looking at each of the projects. All 30 teams will give a 20-minute presentation explaining what their product is and how it works to the competition judges on Friday as well. Nine of those entries will be chosen for another presentation to be given Saturday, from which the winner will be chosen.

Prizes range from $8,000 for first place to $2,400 for finishing fifth.

Rover says competitions like this are excellent learning experiences for students. “Being finalists,” she adds, “says a lot about the character of these students and the support they received from Iowa State.”

If things work out, maybe someday it could be said that free pizza changed the world for the visually impaired.

Ah, the power of cheese.