Texas Tech University · Lubbock
AI that lives inside the hardware.
A Texas Tech student organization building embedded intelligence. We design the hardware, train the models that run on it, and carry both to a working prototype.
How this started
Tech Innovation Labs began with a group of students building hardware projects outside of coursework.
We wanted a place to keep doing that alongside people with the same interest, so we registered the organization around one principle: projects belong to the students who build them.
Capabilities
A single technical focus
Tech Innovation Labs develops embedded intelligence: machine learning models deployed on hardware we design, integrated into working products. The scope is deliberately narrow, and every project runs on physical silicon.
On-device inference
Models execute on the target hardware rather than a remote server. That constraint governs model architecture, quantisation, latency budget, and processor selection.
In-house hardware
Analog front ends, embedded platforms, and FPGA logic developed internally, so the model and the hardware are co-designed against shared requirements rather than integrated after the fact.
Production intent
Each project targets an identified user and is carried to a functional prototype: assembled, powered, and evaluated against its requirements.
Process
Member-driven project selection
Projects are not assigned. Each cycle opens with a pitching period, the membership votes, and approved proposals receive a team, bench allocation, and budget.
Proposal
Any member may submit a proposal stating the problem, the affected users, and a feasibility assessment scoped to one semester.
Selection
The membership votes. Approved projects receive a team, bench space, and a budget allocation. The remainder return to the queue for the next cycle.
Development
Hardware, models, and integration proceed concurrently under scheduled design and code reviews, so subsystem interfaces are validated as they are built.
Review
Demonstrations and technical presentations to faculty, industry partners, and competition judges. External deadlines set the schedule.
Active programs
Active development
Active build
EMG neural interface
A wearable surface electromyography system that decodes intended movement. The target application is a myoelectric controller: acquire signals from the residual muscles of a partial-hand or transradial amputee, classify the intended action, and actuate a prosthetic hand.
Surface EMG is difficult to acquire. The signal occupies the microvolt range beneath mains interference, motion artifact, and electrode drift.
An FPGA performs acquisition timing and onset detection at deterministic latency and timestamps each muscle event. Embedded cores run the grasp classifier. Grounding topology dominates the design effort; at these amplitudes the fault is almost always the interface rather than the sensor.
Active build
Modular AI helmet
Industrial head protection has addressed a single failure mode for a century: impact. It does not record, infer, or reconstruct an incident after the fact.
We are not manufacturing headgear. We develop the AI core and sensor stack that integrates into existing shells, so one architecture serves construction, oil and gas, warehouse, and sport variants. Inference runs on-device, so detection is independent of network availability, and events are written to a timestamped log that neither party can alter.
Additional projects enter the same way: a member proposal, a membership vote, then a team. Nothing is listed here before it has been approved and started.
engineers, designers, and builders
Drawn from electrical and computer engineering, computer science, mechanical and industrial engineering, with business and media roles supporting each build.
Founder
Karim Mahdi
Texas Tech Electrical & Computer Engineering.
Founder
Caleb Schaunaman
Texas Tech Electrical & Computer Engineering.
Build teams
Executive board
Elected by the membership each April.
Faculty advisor
Dr. Hamed Sari-Sarraf
Electrical & Computer Engineering. Computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Where we compete
Membership
Join Tech Innovation Labs
No prior experience required. Sustained contribution expected. Two intake routes, either one sufficient.
Route one
Interest form
Records your major, year, and technical interests. Team assignment is made from these responses, so this is the faster route.
Fill out the interest formRoute two
TechConnect
Registers you on the official Texas Tech roster for the organization through the university portal.
Join on TechConnectEither route reaches us. Completing both places you on the roster and on a build team.
What happens next
Staying in good standing
- A Texas Tech student in good academic standing
- At the general meetings, most of the time
- Contributing to at least one committee or project team
- Representing the organization and the university well
Your work stays yours to talk about. Once a project has been shown publicly, members can describe their own contribution on a résumé.
Membership is open regardless of race, colour, religion, national origin, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, citizenship, or veteran status. We hold a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination and harassment, in line with Texas Tech University policy.
Partnerships
Sponsor a build. Meet the engineers.
Sponsorship places your organization on a prototype presented to faculty, investors, and competition judges, and puts your recruiters in front of Texas Tech engineering students while they are still building.
- tilabsttu@gmail.com
- Meetings
- Thursdays, 5:00 PM, ECE Building Room 118
Upcoming dates on TechConnect - Campus
- Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas
- Texas Tech University – SGA, Box 42032-22
Lubbock, TX 79409 - Discord
- Join the server
- Apply
- Interest form
- Roster
- TechConnect