Current

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Making Rowing Boats Faster: Performance Metrics [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Rowing is a very complex sport which strongly relies both on physiological strength and technical skills.
No matter if you have already watched a rowing event at the Olympic Games, the annual Uni-Poly-Match here in Zurich or you even have own experiences in rowing boats - the main question for rowers and spectators is: What exactly makes a boat fast?
Our project aims at equipping state-of-the-art rowing boats with miniaturized motion sensors to investigate possibilities to improve rowing technique and speed. We are partnering with Swiss and German pro rowers and coaches.
The needed hardware (miniaturized acceleration sensors) is already available and tested in a pre-study.
Your tasks are:
- Find the locations for the sensors on the boat that lead to best results
- Record data of rowers ranging from beginners to professional rowers
- Analyze recorded data and find quantitative measures to describe different movement patterns and common mistakes in rowing technique.
Finally, the goal is to reveal relationships between movement measures and rowing technique/experience.
Your work will find an answer to the question: Which measures qualify for supporting a coach in improving the rower's technique?

Project Website: http://www.wearable.ethz.ch/research/groups/sports/rowing


Distribution: 40% Experiments, 50% Theory and Signal Processing, 10% Optimization
Requirements: Programming, Matlab, Rowing basics would be beneficial but not necessary
Main supervisor: Franz Gravenhorst, H97, E-Mail: gravenhorst@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 76 41
Second supervisor: Bernd Tessendorf, H96, E-Mail: tessendorf@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 25191
Project Title: Project Links
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Making Rowing Boats Faster: Framework and Algorithm [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Rowing is a very complex sport which strongly relies both on physiological strength and technical skills.
No matter if you have already watched a rowing event at the Olympic Games, the annual Uni-Poly-Match here in Zurich or you even have own experiences in rowing boats - the main question for rowers and spectators is: What exactly makes a boat fast?
Our project aims at equipping state-of-the-art rowing boats with miniaturized motion sensors to investigate possibilities to improve rowing technique and speed. We are partnering with Swiss and German pro rowers and coaches.
The needed hardware (miniaturized acceleration sensors) is already available and tested in a pre-study. You can either record own data or use available data sets. Your job is to develop a segmentation algorithm which detects the different phases of a rowing stroke based on the recorded sensor data. Finally, you implement a framework with a GUI to visualize and evaluate your algorithm by comparing its results to reference segmentations which are performed manually.
With the help of the framework you can vary your segmentation approach (such as simple signal thresholds or wavelet filters) and optimize the applied parameters.

Project Website: http://www.wearable.ethz.ch/research/groups/sports/rowing



Distribution: 30% Signal Processing, 50% Framework Implementation, 10% Segmentation Algorithm, 10% Optimization
Requirements: Programming, Matlab, Rowing basics would be beneficial but not necessary
Main supervisor: Franz Gravenhorst, H97, E-Mail: gravenhorst@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 76 41
Second supervisor: Bernd Tessendorf, H96, E-Mail: tessendorf@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 25191
Project Title: Project Links
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Sensors for Musical Instruments [D-ITET, 1]

We look for student(s), interested in sensing, data acquisition and musical instruments. In the project ?Toward a Science of Music Performance? different sensors for measurements in the area of music performance and musical instruments are applied and developed. With these sensors we measure motion, posture and forces of the musician and the contact points between musical instrument and musician. The setup allows unhindered playing and performing of the musicians.
Several sensors for acceleration, pressure and force measurement are already used within the project. The goal of this thesis is to extend the sensing setup with new modalities and evaluate their benefit.
A concrete task could be one of the following:

- Is fatigue while exercising measurable? Can individual exercising/pausing times be recommended?
- How does coordination, pressure or precision of the finger change in different performance situations?
- Is progress within a certain exercising situation measureable?
- How do data of specific tasks (e.g. position shifts, bowing types, fingerings) of amateurs and professionals vary?
- Which combination of sensors is useful for specific problems of musical instrument playing?



Distribution: Hardware (30% or more), evaluating sensor setups (30%) and software, if needed (40% or less)
Requirements: : Interest in refining sensors and experiments with it for musical instruments and musicians, signal processing and programming (MATLAB) beneficial.
Main supervisor: Tobias Grosshauser, H90, E-Mail: grosshauser@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 0786961272
Second supervisor: Alberto Calatroni, H94, E-Mail: alberto.calatroni@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 33 91
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Musical Instruments and Mobile Phones [D-ITET, ST, 1]

Several sensor systems for musical instruments are developed within the project ?Toward a Science of Music Performance?. Sensors for acceleration, position and force measurement are already used within the project. To make the sensor data accessible to musicians a data capturing App for data recording and visualization should be developed. Several visualization methods could be evaluated together with musicians to find applicable solutions. Main focus is on strings and piano, but also other musical instruments like wind instruments and guitar can be included.

Distribution: Programming (60 % or more) and evaluation (40 %)
Requirements: Programming skills (Android SDK) and interest in sensors and musical instruments
Main supervisor: Tobias Grosshauser, H90, E-Mail: grosshauser@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 0786961272
Second supervisor: Alberto Calatroni, H94, E-Mail: alberto.calatroni@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 33 91
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Inferring health condition from movement patterns - a user study [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

The increasing aging society introduces several difficulties into elderly care, one of them being the increasing number of elderly people to monitor on a regular basis. We work towards applying sensor technology to support doctors and caretakers with automatic monitoring of elderly people in their everyday environment.
During stair climbing, different movement patterns and the stair climbing speed indicate a subject's health and fitness level. You will work towards automatic assessment of the stair climbing task. In a literature review and interviews with clinicians you will identify the most prominent movement patterns. Afterwards, you will collect data covering these patterns using body-worn sensors and modify existing algorithms to assess these. You will conduct a user study where you recruit elderly people and evaluate your algorithms.


Distribution: 10% Literature - 20% Algorithms - 70% Experiment & Evaluation
Requirements: Matlab, interest in experiments
Main supervisor: Julia Seiter, H97, E-Mail: julia.seiter@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 22744
Second supervisor: Christina Strohrmann, H 64, E-Mail: strohrmann@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 05 44
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Walking pattern recognition for gait rehabilitation [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Rehabilitation exercises for Parkinson's disease patients include gait tasks, where they have to perform turns and circle objects. To monitor the performance and provide motivating feedback to the user, you will develop algorithms for walking pattern recognition from foot-mounted IMUs. Think of slalom walks with defined spacing and number of turns. You will have to estimate the execution quality in terms of timing, step length and further parameters and encourage the patient to improve upon previous results, e.g. in form of a simple game.
The final system will consist of a foot-mounted IMU and a feedback device (e.g. a smartphone). Depending on scope of the thesis, you will also be involved in the system evaluation with healthy subjects and patients.

Distribution: 20% Literature, 40% algorithms, 40% experiments and evaluation
Requirements: Matlab/Python/Android skills are beneficial
Main supervisor: Michael Hardegger, ETZ H 9, E-Mail: hardegger@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 52 97
Second supervisor: Long-Van Nguyen-Dinh, H95, E-Mail: longvan@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 044 632 51 41
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Parkinson's disease rehabilitation with Kinect [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

As part of the EU project CuPiD , we want to develop an unobtrusive system for at-home rehabilitation of Parkinson's disease patients. We use body-mounted IMUs for measurement of body-segment orientation, evaluate the patient?s movements and give visual feedback via a gaming environment. An alternative for tracking body-segment motion is Kinect. While Kinect is limited in terms of accuracy and affected by errors in limb detection, it is cheap and does not require the user to manually attach sensors to his body. You will evaluate the usefulness of Kinect in at-home rehabilitation, e.g. for seamless calibration of the misalignment between IMUs and body segments or to reduce the number of body-mounted sensors by fusing Kinect and IMU measurements. Your algorithms will be implemented in the gaming platform and help to make rehabilitation systems more user-friendly and affordable.

Distribution: 40% algorithms, 20% implementation, 40% experiments
Requirements: Matlab, experience with Kinect is beneficial
Main supervisor: Michael Hardegger, ETZ H 9, E-Mail: hardegger@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 52 97
Second supervisor: Sinziana Mazilu, H81, E-Mail: sinziana.mazilu@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: !41 44 632 49 69
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Tapping the power of GAMING (Gateway to Amassing Massive Intelligence) [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Is there a recipe where people can have fun playing games while solving tough computational problems? Can you think of how to create such a win-win scenario? Recently, simple yet socially-enabled games like DrawSomething (sold for 200 million USD) or Words With Friends have achieved a surprising amount of popularity. On the other hand, researchers have shown that "games-with-a-purpose" are extremely powerful at scaling up human computation power to tackle large, difficult problems in computer science. We believe an intersection can be made by creating games that leverage the wisdom of the crowd for current research in real-life activity recognition.

In this project, your task is to implement an innovative approach for a major challenge in video activity recognition - segmentation and annotation of real-life activities. In other words, we want to identify when and what is happening for a given video clip.

Your tasks are:
1. Review current publications and trends in applying gamification techniques
2. Implement a provided strategy (or your own!) and the necessary infrastructure to collect user-generated annotations
3. Deploy and evaluate the quality of annotations against ground truth and traditional techniques

Finally, you will analyze the performance of your strategy with varying conditions (e.g. low participant quantity, spammers, etc). Feel free to respond via email or just drop by to chat. We look forward to discussing our approaches and hearing your creative inputs!

Distribution: 10% literature review, 50% development and deployment, 40% data collection and analysis
Requirements: Fun and innovative game lover, interest in how people interact with computers, some mobile/general programming skills
Main supervisor: Zack Zhu, H81, E-Mail: zackzhu@gmail.com, Telephone: 0446325164
Second supervisor: Alberto Calatroni, H94, E-Mail: alberto.calatroni@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 33 91
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Amplifier circuits based on IGZO thin-film transistors [D-ITET, MT, 1..2]

Thin-film electronics are a key component for integrating sensors into woven smart textiles. Many sensor types require an amplification of their analogue voltage or current output. Therefore, we started to build amplifier circuits for voltage and current signals made of IGZO thin-film transistors on flexible substrates and obtained promising results. The goal of this thesis is to improve on these amplifiers in terms of speed, gain and circuit complexity. To achieve this goal we are looking for a student who is interested in simulation, design and evaluation of analogue electronics, such as operational amplifiers and low noise amplifiers. Simulation and design comprise tasks such as improving our existing transistor model, designing and simulating amplifier circuits and layout the circuits. The evaluation tasks involve testing fabricated amplifier circuits and improving the measurement set-up. This work is an unique opportunity to apply and deepen your knowledge on transistors and analogue circuits.

Distribution: 10% literature study; 50% modeling, simulation, layout; 40% testing
Requirements: Interest in simulation and measurement and basic knowledge of analog electronics
Main supervisor: Christoph Zysset, H61.1, E-Mail: zysset@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 0446326126
Second supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Textile integrated accelerometers [D-ITET, ST, 1]

Sensors in textile fabrics are a research field under investigation for several years. Usually sensors are mounted onto textiles on a rigid or flexible substrate. We follow the approach of mounting sensors on flexible substrates and incorporate them into textiles during the weaving process. One field of application for smart textiles is activity recognition. Many systems used for activity recognition, such as the SMASH shirt, rely on accelerometers to detect movement of body parts. The aim of this thesis is to use textile integrated accelerometers to spot body movements for example of the leg or the arm. The first part of the thesis contains the textile integration of the sensors and in the second part the system has to be evaluated. This is done by recording the sensor data and simultaneously record data from a reference system like ETHOS. Then the two recorded data streams need to be compared with regard to differences caused by misalignment of the textile integrated sensor. Finally it can be decided whether the textile integrated sensor is able to detect the same activity as a body worn sensor from the reference system.

Distribution: Theory: 10%, Textile integration: 30%, Experiments: 30%, Evaluation: 30%
Requirements: Interest in working with materials not commonly found in electrical engineering, Matlab, C
Main supervisor: Christoph Zysset, H61.1, E-Mail: zysset@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 0446326126
Second supervisor: Christina Strohrmann, H 64, E-Mail: strohrmann@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 05 44
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Tagging Human Activities from Video by Crowd-Sourcing [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Label tagging acquisition is an often time-consuming, but essential step in supervised learning. Activity tagging from videos/pictures is difficult due to its ambiguity and diversity. Annotation from crowd-sourcing (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Internet) is a new trend to get label tags cheaply and quickly. In this project, you will be in charge of designing and developing the system to get activity tagging for an existing daily activity dataset from crowd-sourcing. You can choose to develop a web-based or smartphone-based application or use Amazon Mechanical Turk to acquire the tagging for videos. You also need to develop algorithms/metrics to analyze the quality of tagging as well as rate how good the taggers are.

Distribution: 10% Literature; 30% Design; 20% Algorithm; 40% development and evaluation
Requirements: Interest in user-study, design and evaluation. General programming language is a plus.
Main supervisor: Long-Van Nguyen-Dinh, H95, E-Mail: longvan@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 044 632 51 41
Second supervisor: Zack Zhu, H81, E-Mail: zackzhu@gmail.com, Telephone: 0446325164
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Stretchable transistors [D-ITET, ST/MT, 1]

Nowadays thin film transistors (TFTs) are one of the most important electronic devices, mainly because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication. In the last time the fabrication of TFTs on flexible substrates has also become an important research field. Flexible substrates are for example plastic foils which are bendable. The next step in this development is the replacement of the flexible substrates by elastic ones; this means e.g. deformable and stretchable polymers. Unfortunately the resistivity of plastic foils against high temperatures and chemicals is limited; therefore it?s difficult to fabricate devices like TFTs on flexible substrates. This problem gets even worse if we want to use elastic polymers.
The aim of this thesis will be the fabrication of TFTs on elastic substrates. This will be done using a shadow mask process. This process enables the device fabrication at room temperature without the need to use any chemical etchants or solvents. Nevertheless problems correlated e.g. with the high surface roughness of the available elastic substrates have to be solved. The characterization of the fabricated TFTs is also a part of this thesis.
This thesis gives you the opportunity to work inside a state-of-the-art cleanroom, and to gain experience with different semiconductor deposition and analysis tools.


Distribution: 60% cleanroom work, 40% measurement
Requirements: Interest in thin film technology
Main supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Second supervisor: Thomas Kinkeldei, H61.1, E-Mail: kinkeldei@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 24727
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Bending flexible electronic circuits [D-ITET, ST/MT, 1]

Nowadays thin film transistors (TFTs) are one of the most important electronic devices, mainly because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication. The maybe biggest advantage of TFTs ? the possible fabrication on flexible substrates ? is not jet commercially used, even though the potential of artificial skins or smart textiles is huge. One problem is the partially still unknown influence of mechanical strain on the performance of flexible TFT circuits.
The Electronics Laboratory fabricates different circuits like amplifiers and logic gates on flexible plastic substrates using novel oxidic semi-conducing materials like amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO).
The aim of this thesis will be the characterization of either digital or analog circuits exposed to mechanical strain, induced by bending. These experiments will answer questions concerning the impact of mechanical stain on the circuit performance, and the minimum possible bending radius. Additionally, also the influence of different material combinations and circuit layouts are open research problems. Answers to these questions are e.g. important for the reliable fabrication of flexible displays.


Distribution: 70% measurements, 30% evaluation
Requirements: Interest in thin film technology, and characterization techniques
Main supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Second supervisor: Christoph Zysset, H61.1, E-Mail: zysset@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 0446326126
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Designing a Speaker Identification System on a Mobile Phone [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Speech is the most important communication medium for human beings. Monitoring conversation activities of a person during the day reveals interesting information of the person's social relations, behavior and even her/his character. Surprisingly, it is enough to monitor just when a person is speaking and for how long - without any knowledge of what she/he is speaking.
The aim of this project is to develop a speaker identification system on a mobile phone (e.g. Android, IPhone). Conversations are monitored on the mobile phone by annotating the time persons have spoken. The identification system should use the build-in microphone for speaker identification by voice. Additionally, the system should dynamically learn new speaker: speakers known by the system are identified by an ID, whereas unknown speakers are recognized as unknown and directly learned and tagged with a new ID for future identification.


Distribution: 20% Literature, 60% Algorithms, 20% Evaluation
Requirements: Interest in signal processing, context recognition and mobile phone programming.
Main supervisor: Mirco Rossi, H96, E-Mail: mrossi@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +44 632 7961
Second supervisor: Sebastian Feese, H67, E-Mail: feese@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +41 44 632 30 77
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Flexible n and p type TFTs based on oxide semiconductors [D-ITET, 1]

Nowadays thin film transistors (TFTs) are one of the most important electronic devices, mainly because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication- just think about the great success of TFT displays or touch screens in the last few years! By comparison to high performance transistors used in modern microprocessors, flexible thin film transistors are produced on bendable, substrates like plastic, and not on bulky semiconductor wafers. Therefore they have to be fabricated a low temperature (200 °C).
As the name suggests a TFT consists of various very thin layers deposited and structured one after the other using different semiconductor fabrication technologies.
The Electronics Laboratory is fabricating TFTs using novel oxidic semi-conducing materials such as polycrystalline amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO). The deposition of this material is done using a sputter tool. Nearly all oxidic semiconductors are n-type, therefore the search for a usable oxidic p-type semiconductor is an important research field.
In this thesis you will work in the cleanroom and learn how to handle different semiconductor manufacturing technologies. Depending on your interest the goal of this thesis could be for example:
- The deposition and characterization of p-type semiconductors like NiO or SnO on plastic substrates, leading to the production of flexible p-type TFTs and simple CMOS circuits like inverters by combining p-type and the established n-type process.
- The fabrication top instead of bottom gate TFTs. This can potentially decrease the number of needed process steps while maintaining the good performance of a-IGZO TFTs


Distribution: 30% characterization, 70% cleanroom work
Requirements: Curiosity
Main supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Second supervisor: Luisa Petti, xx, E-Mail: petti@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 21210
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Simulation of Negative Capacitance Ferroelectric Transistor [D-ITET, MT, 1]

It is generally accepted that the ongoing scaling of field effect transistors (FETs) will be eventually limited by the inability to remove the heat generated in the switching process, making it very important to find ways to reduce the power dissipated per switching event. In a FET, the most important limiting factor to the power dissipation is the inverse subthreshold slope (SS) that essentially is how much voltage is needed to increase the drain to source current of one decade. In silicon transistor this limit is set to 60mV/dec. Very recently it has been proposed by a Prof. in Berkeley that a ferroelectric gate stack could operates as a step-up voltage amplifier, thanks to a Negative Capacitance effect, and lower the SS below the 60mV/dec limit. Moreover a proof of concept has been also achieved at EPFL through the integration of a ferroelectric polymer.
However, a complete numerical model has not been developed yet. Hence the main goal of the project is to simulate the voltage and temperature dependence of the ferroelectric material and its multi-domains structure and integrate it on top of a transistor like structure. Moreover a scaled device will be also compared to other emerging devices (TFETs, CNT transistors).


Distribution: 30% literature study, 70% simulation
Requirements: Knowledge of transistors and device simulation
Main supervisor: Giovanni Salvatore, H1000, E-Mail: giovanni.salvatore@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 666666
Second supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Flexible analog circuits for RF and wireless applications [D-ITET, ST/MT, 1]

Thin film transistors (TFTs) are important electronic devices because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication. Thanks to the low-temperature fabrication process, TFTs can be fabricated on plastic substrates, leading to a wide range of new applications, such as flexible displays, electronic textiles, and artificial skins. Nowadays a variety of flexible digital circuits have been fabricated, whereas only a few examples of analog circuits have been demonstrated. Analog circuits based on flexible TFTs operating in the MHz regime can open the way for flexible radio applications and wireless communications. The Electronics Laboratory is fabricating flexible analog circuits based on amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) TFTs. Aim of this thesis is to characterize a-IGZO TFT devices in terms of RF behavior, utilizing S-parameter analysis. In a second step, using the extrapolated RF parameters, a modeling of the device will be carried out and an analog design kit will be developed. To achieve this goal we are looking for a student who is interested in transistor characterization and simulation, and possesses a basic knowledge of analog electronics. This work is a unique opportunity to apply and deepen your knowledge on transistors and analog circuits.

Distribution: 10% literature study, 40% characterization, 50% simulations
Requirements: Interest in measurements and simulations, and basic knowledge of analog electronics
Main supervisor: Luisa Petti, xx, E-Mail: petti@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 21210
Second supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Detecting Daily Life Routines based on Environmental Sound [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a device helping you to remember what you have done on a certain point of time in the past, e.g. last Friday at 4pm or last year during Easter? A device that unobtrusively keeps track of your daily live, your personal diarization system? Besides of such an application, the detection of daily life routines has gained a lot of interest recently for diverse domains spanning from industrial applications to modeling of human behavior analysis.
In previous works we showed that based on audio we can recognize many daily life sounds, such as keyboard typing, chatting, and footsteps. Additionally, we showed that this recognition can be done directly on a mobile phone in an unobtrusively way (without disturbing the user).
In this thesis we go a step further. The goal is to recognize reoccurring, abstract daily life routines (e.g. shopping, working, and eating) based on the recognized sounds. For the recognition, you will apply new methods, which are widely used in text-classification problems (e.g. by Google).


Distribution: 20% Literature, 50% Algorithms, 30% Evaluation
Requirements: Programming in Matlab or R, Machine Learning
Main supervisor: Mirco Rossi, H96, E-Mail: mrossi@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +44 632 7961
Second supervisor: Julia Seiter, H97, E-Mail: julia.seiter@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 22744
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Does your smartphone know what you did today? [D-ITET/D-INFK, 1..2]

Smartphones have become very popular in our society. As they provide sensor data such as motion and GPS signals, smartphones offer great possibilities to track characteristic daily routines in a person's life. Monitoring daily routines would allow meaningful conclusions e.g. on a person?s health condition in elderly care by detecting changes in their habits.

Your task would be to assess daily routines from smartphone sensor data such as GPS and acceleration signals. In a first step meaningful information needs to be extracted from sensor data such as characteristic locations (at work, at home) or motion patterns (sitting, using the tram). In a second step you will apply discovery algorithms to find structures in the information corresponding to daily routines. A dataset including a variety of different sensor signals will be available.


Distribution: 10% literature, 60% algorithms, 30% evaluation
Requirements: Matlab programming
Main supervisor: Julia Seiter, H97, E-Mail: julia.seiter@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 22744
Second supervisor: Mirco Rossi, H96, E-Mail: mrossi@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: +44 632 7961
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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2D MsO2 semiconductor transistor on plastic [D-ITET, MT, 1]

Thin film transistors (TFTs) are important electronic devices because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication. Two-dimensional materials have interesting physical properties, and are attractive for use in next-generation TFTs because, compared to one-dimensional materials, it is relatively easy to fabricate complex structures from them. The most widely studied two-dimensional material is graphene both because of its rich physics and its high electron mobility; however, it does not have a bandgap, a property that is essential for many applications, including transistors. Although, single layers of MoS2 have a large intrinsic bandgap of 1.8 eV and high mobility; moreover its integration in a transistor like structure has been already demonstrated showing a room-temperature mobility of at least 200 cm2/Vs, a current on/off ratio of 1x108 and ultralow standby power dissipation.
The main goal of the project is to fabricate MsO2 Thin Film Transistors (TFTs) on flexible plastic substrate. This could path the way to a new generation of TFTs for plastic electronics. The MsO2 will be deposited through exfoliation, this means thin layers of the material are transferred to the plastic substrate using a sticky tape. The main part of this work will be performes in the FIRST cleanroom. This gives you the opportunity to get familiar with the most important semiconductor processing technologies. The finished TFTs will be electricaly characterized using state of the art characterization equipment.


Distribution: 10% literature study, 60% fabrication, 30% characterization
Requirements: Knowledge of transistors and interest in micro technologies
Main supervisor: Giovanni Salvatore, H1000, E-Mail: giovanni.salvatore@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 666666
Second supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Atomistic Simulation of InGaZnO TFTs [D-ITET, MT, 1]

Electronic devices formed on flexible substrates are expected to meet emerging technological demands where silicon-based electronics cannot provide a solution. Examples of active flexible applications include paper displays and wearable computers. Moreover the realization of thin film transistors (TFTs) with enhanced performance could definitely pave the way to the realization of flexible and cheap RF circuits (i.e. RFID tags), functionalized biological sensors, and flexible memory cells.
Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (InGaZnO) is one of the most promising materials for the realization of high speed TFTs. In contrast with covalent semiconductors, degenerate band conduction and large mobility (>10 cm2/Vs) are possible in this material containing post-transition-metal cations. Electron conduction happens through the overlap of spatially spread ns-orbitals between neighbor atoms.
The Electronic Laboratory is fabricating InGaZnO TFTs on plastic substrate. In order to improve their DC and AC characteristics, device simulations are essential. The goal of this project is to develop a simulation approach to model the transport properties of InGaZnO TFTs at the atomic level. An existing computer aided design tool should be extended for that purpose. In a second step, to validate the models, realistic TFT structures will be simulated and the results compared to available experimental data. If proven successful, the simulation approach will be used to optimize the performance of InGaZnO TFTs that will be later on fabricated at IFE.



Main supervisor: Dr. Giovanni A. Salvatore, H90,
e-mail: giovanni.salvatore@ife.ee.ethz.ch, phone: 22377
Second supervisor: Prof. Mathieu Luisier, J82, e-mail: mluisier@iis.ee.ethz.ch,
phone: 21194

Professor: Prof. Tröster, Prof. Luisier


Distribution: Distribution: 30% literature study, 70% simulation
Requirements: Requirements: Knowledge in material science and device simulation.
Main supervisor: Giovanni Salvatore, H1000, E-Mail: giovanni.salvatore@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 666666
Second supervisor: Gerhard Tröster, H89, E-Mail: troester@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 23964
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster

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Flexible short-channel vertical transistors [D-ITET, MT, 1]

Thin film transistors (TFTs) are important electronic devices because of their low price and the possibility of large area fabrication. Thanks to the low-temperature fabrication process, TFTs can be fabricated on plastic substrates, leading to a wide range of new applications, such as flexible displays, artificial skins, and wearable electronics. The Electronics Laboratory is fabricating flexible TFT devices using novel oxide semiconducting materials, such as amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO). Using a-IGZO TFTs, both digital and analog circuits have been demonstrated. For analog circuits, flexible and fast a-IGZO TFTs can open the way for flexible radio applications and wireless communications. In order to fabricate TFTs operating in the MHz regime, transistors with sub micrometer channel lengths are required. A possibility to achieve sub micrometer channel lengths TFTs consists of developing vertical channel transistors, i.e. devices with channel length controlled by the thickness of the semiconducting layer between source and drain contacts. Aim of this thesis is to evaluate possible fabrication process for vertical channel flexible a-IGZO TFTs. In a second step, vertical-channel TFTs, with sub micrometer gate lengths will be fabricated and tested. This thesis is a great opportunity to work inside the FIRST Lab, the cleanroom facility of the ETH, and to gain experience with different thin film micro fabrication technologies.

Distribution: 10% literature study, 40% evaluation and mask layout, 40% clean-room fabrication, 10% testing
Requirements: Interest in micro fabrication technologies
Main supervisor: Luisa Petti, xx, E-Mail: petti@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 21210
Second supervisor: Niko Münzenrieder, H61.1, E-Mail: niko.muenzenrieder@ife.ee.ethz.ch, Telephone: 20411
Project Title:
Professor: Prof. Tröster