CMU capstone contribution
Shade AI
A portable, autonomous beach umbrella that used computer vision and solar modeling to keep shade centered on a user.
Shade AI addressed the recurring problem of manually repositioning a beach umbrella as the sun and user move. The system paired a mathematical solar-position model with a camera-based user-tracking pipeline to calculate the canopy orientation needed to maintain shade coverage.
A Raspberry Pi 5 coordinated the perception pipeline, control logic, and Bluetooth communication with the mobile application. An IMU supplied the umbrella's physical orientation, while dual stepper motors produced the pan and tilt adjustments. The result was a closed-loop system that connected sensing, decision-making, and mechanical actuation in a consumer-scale device.
My work focused on the computer-vision and autonomous-tracking subsystem: developing the OpenCV-based pipeline, tuning user detection, improving latency, and integrating the angular-correction mapping used by the motor-control loop.