Lawrence Tech Department of Math and Computer Science Blog

Man-made nesting boxes are often used by bird conservationists to provide shelter for birds and compensate for the resources and territories that birds loose in favor of urbanization. Due to the increased urbanization, in the past few decades nesting-boxes have been becoming an increasingly important tool to protect bluebirds and increase bluebird population. Sarah Svatora, a Computer Science undergraduate student at LTU who is also a bird conservationist decided to merge her two fields of interest, and developed a computational model that improve the efficacy of the placement of the nesting boxes, and provides and optimal nesting box placement strategy. Her model is based on computer-aided analysis of satellite images, showing that eastern bluebirds tend to select nesting boxes based on special patterns of the texture of the landscape around that box. Her results showed that the performance of nesting boxes can be improved by almost 50% if placed based on her method compared to the way the boxes are placed currently. Her results were described in her senior project final paper, which was reviewed by experts and now published in the journal Computational Ecology and Software.

Her paper is now available on-line here.

Corry Bechtel is not a game development student, but decided to develop a video game in the spring semester. The game is called “Humanities Last Hope” (HLH), and it is a 2D side scroller video game where the user enters key commands and work to collect all the remaining parts by moving the character through the level and eliminating the enemies. The player can move left and right, jump with a parabolic trajectory, and shoot in all eight directions from himself/herself. There are two main enemies: a stationary one, and a missile projectile that can either be dodged or shot down. Both enemies when shot down have the chance to drop one of a handful of upgrades. The game uses C# with the help of extended libraries provided from XNA. The main XNA functions used in the codebase of HLH are the XNA built-in functions, as well as C# and custom made math functions. The resulting product is a game demo that takes the player through the typical flow of the game, introducing them along the way to enemies and power ups.

To play the game, all you have to do is download the game, turn your speakers on, and have fun!

Download link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/74027284/Final%20Product%20Demo.zip

Please visit Our 2012 IGVC (Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition) team page on the web at:
http://www.robofest.net/igvc/

Dr. Pamela Lowry of the department of Math and Computer Science will receive the fourth annual Teaching and Learning Using Technology Award.

Professor Lowry has been with Lawrence Technological University since 1985.   Since that time Dr. Lowry has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses.  She has also participated in Focus: HOPE Greenfield Blackboard Coalition which involved LTU and other local universities.  From 2001-2009 Dr. Lowry served as the Director of the Veraldi Instructional Technology Resource Center.  In 2001 Dr. Lowry was named the Associate Director of the Master of Educational Technology Program for which she now serves as the Co-Director.  When developing her courses incorporating technology Dr. Lowry feels it is important to develop concepts and strategies pertaining to the instructional design of the course and to include activities to promote student engagement. Dr. Lowry strives to be motivating and positive in corresponding with her students by using different strategies such as discussion boards, podcasts, Wimba lectures, inking, and group work to name a few.

Dr. David Bindschadler and Senior Michael Skupny are applying game design techniques to the development of interactive educational tools for Calculus 3. There is a clear connection between learning certain types of skills and developing the skills needed to win a computer game. However, designing a tool that keeps the student engaged is very different from designing a game that will keep the player entertained.

From the early days of the success of video games, many educators have felt that games would be a good education tool. While there have been some effective educational games, there is a long history of educational games that have failed. The problem has been that designers have tried to build entertaining games that educate. Those attempts usually fall into one of two categories: entertaining games that do not educate very well or educational tools that are not all that entertaining. This project will design educational tools that will be engaging, rather than entertaining.

Michael is a senior honors student in the Computer Science program with a concentration in Game Development. He is also a tutor at the Academic Achievement Center. He will be combining the knowledge of game design principles with his experience helping students that struggle with Calculus 3 material in the design and construction of the tools.

Dr. Bindschadler is the Chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science department and developer of the four year Game Development concentration. Before coming to Lawrence Tech he was a professional software developer writing 3D geometric software.  His experience as an educator and software developer will lead to a product that is effective and polished.

A big thank-you from the College of Arts & Sciences to the 9 students who participated in the 2012 MCM on February 9-13 (www.comap.com)!  You put in enormous amounts of time and effort, and some excellent teamwork, to produce a research paper on a challenging problem, working to the last minute to polish the result.  Everyone chose problem A, and all papers were different.

Four days is a short time to research a problem, model and solve it, validate the model, and write a paper, plus keep your class and work commitments.  It is a credit to Lawrence Tech to have students participating in an activity at this level. We hope to know by the end of March how the papers did against the other teams from the US, China, and other countries.

A special thanks also goes to our support team this year: Dr. Bindschadler and Marilyn Wiseman in the MCS Department (and Profs Cartwright and Merscher for food delivery), the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office (great cookies), and especially the LTU campus safety group for their help over the weekend.

Sarah Svatora presented her senior project, in which she developed a computational method based on bird psychology and vision in combination with spatial parameters that can improve nesting box efficacy by up to 50%. Her pioneering research will allow better protection and preservation of blue birds, and can be extended to other species. Sarah was the keynote speaker at the event.

Dr. Chung is internationally recognized as a leader in intelligent systems. He is the founder and director of Robofest, which, with its many related events such as RoboSumo and Thanksgiving RoboParade, has attracted tens of thousands of participants from all over the globe, and became one of the largest and most vibrant robotics competitions in the world. Dr. Chung is also the director of the unmanned vehicle, which was placed fourth in the last Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). He recently invented a fall detection system that will help protect the elderly, and he also develops education and research programs in mobile device programming and augmented reality. Dr. Chung is a member of IEEE, ACM, KSEA, TIIS, and IROC.  His research and educational activities are frequently featured on the national media. Congratulations to Dr. Chung!