Whew! It’s been a long ride.
From meeting the team and our community partner where we heard the problem for the first time, to the site visits and understanding and narrowing our scope. We have finally come to the last stretch of our internships, and we couldn’t be happier with our final result.
This sprint was exciting, as we tested our project’s full system on a single laptop. Connecting the YOLO algorithm for identifying objects in the camera’s frame (i.e real-time), and having its detections reflected and saved into the database and the website. The final step is ensuring an email notification is sent out when the “alert” conditions defined in our last reflection are met.
The email notification system previously mentioned was the preferred communication channel suggested by our community partner. In each notification, we included a screenshot of the object detected, the name of the object detected, the time and date of the detection, the camera that detected the alert, and a link to our website. We chose these features to ensure our clients received all the data necessary to help them determine their next steps with what was detected.
We met with Mami and a group of students who have experience with AI this sprint. They assisted us in finding possible issues with our dataset and suggested we implement a balanced, inclusive, and diverse dataset, to ensure our end product is inclusive and functional. With their guidance, we were able to construct a superior model to improve overall performance significantly. Having the support of people in the community to help brainstorm solutions to our project roadblocks was a very uplifting experience.
Starting this project, we weren’t fully sure what our solution would be, or what we would need to get to the finish line. But every step of the way, we’ve been able to adapt, learn on the go, and work together as a team while improving our soft skills. From becoming better at public speaking, to improving our communication skills, we have learned how to work with professionals, set deadlines, and manage our time effectively, as this was a self-guided project. We are not completing this project with just added technical skills but also with a better understanding of what successful collaboration and project management entails.