SPRING/SUMMER 2000 ARCHIVES Last Updated May 30, 2000 FEATURE: NATIONAL ENGINEERS WEEK 2000 1st annual ACES Golf Tournament Outstanding Young Alumni recognized Thomas Green Clemson Academy inducts new members ALUMNI Take your Que CORPORATE PARTNERS Clemson Foundation honors retired executive Eastman gives $38 million technology FACULTY/STAFF NEWS Chemical Engineering - an award wining dept Classified staff awards Clean Sweep 2000 "Enjoying" retirement OUTREACH How to be an overnight success in five short years - The AOP Hub Story RESEARCH Around-the-clock continuous design Astrophysicist's research ranked among century's most significant Clemson-a leader in technology commercialization Is chocolate good for us? Marijuana-related compounds may ease MS symptoms Nanomaterials Tracking asteriods STUDENTS ASME award-winning website ASME, playing around EARNEST ARCHIVES Spring/Summer 1999 RETURN TO HOME PAGES College of Engineering and Science Home Clemson University Home
			If you saw the movie Armageddon, you have some idea of the challenge facing the students in the ECE 453 Software Practicum course. Tracking asteroids and other bodies in space that may be a threat to Earth was the challenge. Each 5-6 member team was asked to design software that could be used on multiple platforms, was 10 times faster than existing software for the same sort of application, with a design for use 10-20 years in the future. "This project is in the tradition of an open-ended engineering design, with no clear definition of when it is complete," says Dr. James Leathrum, instructor of the course. The team began by designing algorithms to predict where these bodies might be in the future. They compared various programming languages and environments and identified what telescopes would be available, and the type of laser technology that might be used for targeting the asteroid if it needed to be destroyed. The toughest part of the problem for them (and everyone in the course) was grasping the theory of Kalman filtering and estimation, which estimates the position, velocity, and acceleration of a moving body and will predict these factors for a given time in the future. Once the team understood the mathematical concepts, they chose implementation software that was efficient in matrix mathematics, because that is what Kalman estimation requires. All agreed that learning how to work as a team was one of the greatest benefits of this project. Team members also learned better time management and communication skills. With this project, Leathrum was trying to emulate a real world situation -similar to when a small team is asked to develop a particular kind of software. All software teams follow the same basic steps: define the requirements, nail down where the problems are, then design and test. "This was a very challenging project both in mathematical content and in understanding the requirements," adds Leathrum. "I'm very pleased with the analysis that's been done and the ingenuity that has been applied. This experience should serve the students well."
			(from left) Dr. James Leathrum, Steve Kelly, Weston Taber, Krista Chenoweth, Roy Phillpott and Eric Mills

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