This project was developed on a team of students at Marshfield High School, part of the Lemelson-MIT Inventeam program. A total of 15 of high schools from around the US were selected based on their submitted grant on a concept for an invention. In our case, we developed a prototype safety device for the common workspace tool known as a band saw.
This device works by using an infared camera to detect the presence of human hands/limbs on the cutting surface. Through some computer vision thresholding and morphological transformations, human hands were individually tracked, and their future positions were estimated based on their velocity. If any of these future positions put the hands within a danger zone around the blade, a spring-loaded, custom-machined guard would be deployed in less than 150ms.
I was the singular lead developer on this project, tackling the computer vision and position prediction aspects of the product. We successfully presented our prototype at MIT in the early Summer 2019, and began to persue a patent on the device.
I am always looking to take on a new challenge. Message me on LinkedIn or send me an email below and let's get started!