About Me

Hi! I’m Jun Chu, a sophomore from McMurtry studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. I was interested in the SEED internship because I had an amazing experience taking ENGI 120 – Introduction to Engineering Design – during my freshman year. Our team was tasked with creating an interactive and visually appealing data display for the OEDK. I was able to learn a lot about hand tools, laser cutting, and CAD design. The course furthered my interest in engineering design and prompted me to apply for the SEED internship. And this past week at SEED is everything I imagined and more!

First Week

The first week was busy but exciting. To start the week off, we got reacquainted to the OEDK and met all of our amazing interns. I love that we are all from different backgrounds and coming with different mindsets and experiences. We also got to explore the various projects through the Project Fair, where we got to ask the clients questions and learned more about the problem motivation. We ended the first day with some research and project rankings. 

I was lucky enough to get my first pick, Smart Helmet, the goal of which is to modernize military helmets. And it was great to meet my teammates, Hamza, Firas, and Jesus. All of us are coming from different residential colleges and span three majors. I’m very much looking forward to working with everyone. For the next few days, we did in depth research on existing solutions, historical solutions, and explored some technical information regarding haptics. We also spoke to a previous senior design team member who worked on the proof-of-concept prototype, which realizes thermal detection in a 360 degree radius, displays vitals such as heart rate, and detects concussion status. Our team, H&H (Haptic Helmet), is tasked with incorporating a haptic feedback system into the helmet. To prevent sensory overload for the users, we can replace a lot of those visual displays with haptics such as vibrations and buzzing. The involvement of haptics is why I chose this project. I’d love to develop my own wearable brain computer interfacing device in the future, and I imagine haptics to be a crucial part of it.

To wrap up the week, we were able to engage in one of my favorite workshops offered at the OEDK – the hand tools workshop! I love working with my hands and building things. The cute bat houses that we built definitely made my day. Our team also traveled to the MAHI lab at BRC (BioScience Research Collaborative) to learn about the Haptics Kit. The MAHI lab helped us a lot and did an amazing job explaining their syntacts kit to us. We were able to reach preliminary success with outputting vibrations from the tactors, which is connected to a sound amplifier that is controlled by a GUI. 

Next week, we will be looking forward to our client interview to define the problem more clearly, brainstorm potential solutions, and reach more progress with the syntacts kit. Overall, it was such a fun and productive week for me, and I can’t wait for the next one!