Goal and use of this document

The proposal is used to describe a practical research internship which is carried out in semester 5 of the study program. Through this form the student requests approval for the assignment from the internship coordinator. This document is also used to receive feedback from client and coordinator and should lead to all three parties having one single view of the assignment. The student is responsible for writing the content, based on input of the organization and feedback of the coordinator. This document may be written in Dutch.

Student details

Student number: 3812502

First name + Family name: Skyler Vermeer

Location: Eindhoven

Profile Semester 3: Open

Specialisation Semester 4: AI

Internship choice: AI

Dutch-speaking?: Yes

Internship period

Start date: Monday February 6th, 2023

End date: Friday June 23th, 2023

Organisation details

Name: Fontys Lectoraat High Tech Embedded Software

Visiting address: Achtseweg Zuid 151C

Zipcode + City + Country: 5651 GW Eindhoven, Netherlands

Phone: 0885079151

Website: https://fontys.nl/Onderzoek/High-tech-embedded-software.htm

Own Company (“Eigen bedrijf”)?: No

Address: Achtseweg Zuid 153, 5651 GW Eindhoven

Company mentor

(The person who guides the student on a regular basis)

First name + Family name: Simona Orzan

Department: Lectoraat High Tech Embedded Softare / Lectoraat AI en Big Data

Position: Teacher Researcher

Background (highest education): PhD Computer Science VU Amsterdam

Background URL (e.g. LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/simona-orzan-9758613/

Phone: 0885079151

Email: s.orzan@fontys.nl

Assignment in ASAM?: No

1.  Context & Problem/Opportunity

Below the organization and its activities and structure are described. It must become clear in which part of the organization and activities the problem or opportunity lies and what the reason is for this assignment.

1.1    Context & Background

The organization is introduced by describing its main activities and processes. The relevant (recent) developments within the company and or related field of interest (e.g. IT) are described also.

The Lectorate ‘High Tech Embedded Software’ from Fontys HBO ICT researches methods and techniques to enhance software development for smart high tech embedded systems.

The project will be concerning the Digital Twin Academy. The work of Fontys focuses on case studies on digital twins ( WP4). Case studies will be conducted on:

Smart Industry Twin - to enable small and medium enterprises to work on their digitization.

Digital City Twin - to enrich open data (air quality) with public area info and other data sources, to define useful eco-score.

Robot4Care Twin - to improve care/hospital environments with robots and IoT.

Virtual/animal Twin - to speed up footage to learn agro tools working in greenhouses with vegatables and conduct continuous experiments with animals.

Where in the case of this internship, it is in the context of the Digital City Twin.

1.2    Current situation & Stakeholders

The current situation regarding the activities, problems (or opportunity) is described. The relevant stakeholders within the organization are provide with an explanation why they (possibly) are stakeholders. The scope of the project must become clear at this point.

Currently there have been several student projects that have focused on air quality. They are a lot of separate projects that are currently being gathered and an inventory is being created for future use.

The current known stakeholders are

  • High Tech Embedded Systems as they are using the project for their Digital Twin Academy.

  • Simona Orzan, as she is the one leading the Digital Twin Cities Research

The project could also be interesting for AiREAS, who have participated in past Digital Twin Cities projects, but are not currently connected to this project. They are an establishment that works on the promotion of knowledge of health and clean air to contribute to a healthy living environment.

1.3    Problem/opportunity description

_The problems/opportunities, possible causes and impact or effects of these problems/opportunities are described.

Concrete examples are given and the depth and scope of the situation is made clear. In this section it should become clear what the added value of the internship will be._

There is currently a lot of data, but research needs to be done on how we can display this location based data in an interesting, useful, informative way. It is part of a group of small practical research ‘nuggets’ that can contribute to the DTA-theme Digital Twin City. This group consists of (ongoing) student projects, experiments from Simona and general ideas. In this case it is about one of these ideas that have not been worked on.

An exhaustive Digital Twin of the city is not realistic, because the sensors and actuators density in a city is much much smaller than with a machine or factory or other closed system. It is however possible and achievable to make Digital Twins for specific contexts and goals such as air quality monitoring, specific data analysis to aid policy making, simulations, informative visualizations etc.

So there has already been research done in similar contexts, but it needs to be researched more and applied so it is relevant for our specific context.

2.  Assignment

2.1    Desired project result

Below it should be clear what the desired result of the internship is. What situation should be reached at the end of the internship?

Project goal

A clear and as concrete as possible description of the intended results and what value they should have for the organization. A (concept) project goal can be formulated and products to be delivered are indicated.

Make the seriousness of city problems more tangible with an AR app that ‘zooms in’ on the environment (air, soil) to a microscopic level. Based on the real-time location-based data, generate an AR picture of how the environment might look like if seen under a powerful microscope. Represent accurately the density and size of each particle type.

Project IT-deliverable

Specifically indicate the IT-products (proof-of-concept) that will be developed. Describe the end product as well as any intermediate products or other deliverables that are already known. For each IT-deliverable, specify the technology( s) to be used.

End product: AR zoomlens application – Augmented Reality, Camera, Real-time Data – Application that uses AR to zoom in on the problems of the city.

Proof of Concepts:

  • Augmented Reality Test – Phone camera, Augmented Reality – POC of how augmented reality could work, without real-time data

  • Real-time data test – Location Tracker, API calls – POC of obtaining real time data and visualizing it

  • Artificial intelligence Predictions – Artificial Intelligence, API calls – POC of what types of predictions can be made based on current and past data.

Deliverables:

  • Research document – Answers the Main and Sub Research Questions

  • Exploratory Data Analysis

  • Feedback Report – Depending on the stage of the project, through various testing methods (AB-testing, wireframes, actual testing) get user feedback on whether the product is working as intended and how to improve it.

2.2    Research aspects

Research questions

As it is important that all results are based upon (also practical) research: Which research questions are going to be relevant in order to achieve the desired project result? Provide (sub)-research questions and possibly a main research question.

These are the current known research questions. Once the initial research phase is done and a choice is made on the specific environment that will be focused on, more sub-questions will follow to aid the main research question.

Main: How can the severity of city problems in Eindhoven be visualized using AR?

Sub:

  • Which city problems are being monitored?

  • What impact do these city problems make?

  • How can these problems be visualized?

Research approach

Regarding the DOT Framework: give a first indication of which research strategies and methods will be used and/or will be the most important ones. Think of the possibilities your internship environment specifically has or lacks and how you can in any case ensure you have enough methods and strategies to use.

Though there are no set methods to use for this research, most likely the ones that will be used are:

  • Literature Study

  • SWOT analysis or Multi Criteria Decision Making

  • Document Analysis

  • Observation

  • Problem Analysis

  • Data Analytics

  • Usability Testing

  • Peer Review and/or Product Review

  • Prototyping

  • Requirements Prioritization

3.  Guidance & Expertise

Coach/Mentor

What background does your company mentor have? Think of education (Bachelor/Master/Phd) as well as experience in ( internship) coaching or mentoring. How many hours of guidance will there be per week and will you be coached?

PhD Computer Science, currently researcher and coach AI Project as well as teacher in AI Advanced. Previous experience coaching graduating students for Software/AI from Fontys side.

She wants to get together at least every week, there is plenty of room to see each other more often depending on what is needed.

Expertise / Guidance

What expertise is available in the company and who has that expertise? What kind of support does the company provide on IT skills related to your domain? Describe the people and/or teams or departments where you are able to go to and who will help and guide you with (IT)-domain related questions, advice and review.

There are plenty of people available with experience in AI, AR, Software etc. Based on the question the correct person( s) will be approached.

4.  Personal & Professional goals

Which aspects on personal or professional development will you further develop? Focus on soft-skills. Select a realistic three to five aspects to work on. Use previous feedback received from others (e.g. semester coaches

Personal goal

Describe what exactly you want to achieve and how to work on this.

Incorporate feedback from others more

As my semester coach put it: “Sometimes you are so convinced of something that it is very difficult for someone else to convince you. I think this is a learning point that you can take with you to your internship, to listen to the other side of the story before you make a decision.” That is why I want to ask more feedback from stakeholders or users or experts and incorporate it in my final goal.

Create realistic scopes

I want to be able to create realistic scopes so I don’t overwork myself because of all the possibilities I see but I also can learn as much as possible. That is why I am going to create soft and hard scopes, hard scopes being goals that I need to accomplish to ensure I can complete the semester, and soft scopes being the parts of research I can expand upon ones these goals are reached.

Ask for help on time

I tend to wait on asking for help because I want to be able to figure it out on my own. To work on this, I will write down what I want to work on when I start the day and document what I have accomplished when I end it. This way if I stray off track but accomplished a lot, I don’t have to ask for help yet but if I notice that something is taking a long time and I am stuck on it I know that I need to ask for help or break the task into smaller pieces. This will also help with creating realistic scopes

5.  (Optional) other important remarks

None currently

A portfolio by Skyler Vermeer