Cats are always a big hit online, and some Aurora University students have been working on a way for people to become even more engaged with felines through their computers.
The Cat Adoption Toy device was one of many computer-science research projects spotlighted Wednesday at the STEM school on the university’s campus in Aurora.
The projects were by students of computer science professor Greg Oij and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and represented the culmination of work done throughout the semester.
Jonathan Birkey, 28, of West Chicago, is one of the team of students working on the cat project. He said the goal was to place the device in the Kane County Animal Control room for cats that would allow people looking to adopt a cat the chance to interact with the animal before seeing it in person.
“People will be able to play with the cats through this site using buttons that can be clicked to play with it,” Birkey said. “Last semester, we did a lot of software engineering projects and actually the head vet there at Kane County is also one of the professors here at AU. This device is the first of its kind to implement a pet toy on the internet.”
Team member David Benitez, 20, of Chicago, said the biggest challenge of coming up with the product was getting all the internal parts working correctly.
“There were nights when someone was up the whole time working on getting the ... plastic parts to work right,” he said.
Another featured project, presented by Kathryn Downing of Cortland, was called My Voice Box. It was an android-based assistive language tool for smartphones or tablets designed to aid people with difficulty or the inability to verbalize speech.
Kristina Krokosz, 21, of Aurora, was among those presenting a project called Leveling the Playing Field.
Krokosz said all of the group members were sports fans and were seeking to find a way to help handle negotiations for professional athletes that were either over- or under-paid.
“This is essentially a way to calculate athletes’ salaries in a more standard form based solely on statistics that would hopefully eliminate contract negotiation,” she said. “My dad actually liked the idea. One of the problems for us was implementing some new computer language.”
Team member Mark McDonough, 22, of Aurora, said baseball is one of his favorite pastimes and having a number of players sign record-breaking contracts this past off-season “added additional fuel to the project.”
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“There are just some players that are way over-paid while others don’t make enough,” he said.
Oij said the projects the students have come up with over the years for the program “have just been outstanding,” adding that there are always “two or three that are just out of sight.”
“I made a suggestion about one of the projects this year, but there have been some phenomenal things during the last seven years,” he said.
He said this year’s presentations were spiced up by inviting alums back to campus in order to see the work by students.
“This gives students a chance to preview things before possibly taking them into the work force and it gives our former students a chance to see the work we’re doing now,” Oij said. “I’ve told the students – one of these people that went here might hire you.”
Mike Michaels, 30, of Chicago, was among the alums attending Wednesday’s presentations and said the program at Aurora University was invaluable for him.
“Professor Oij is the main reason I’m here today, but I have to say the work we did here made it a lot easier to interview for a job and do the work I’m doing now,” Michaels said. “We were able to adapt much quicker to the things that have been thrown at us. Here, you learn the fundamentals and not just the technology flavor of the month.”