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School of Engineering students are keen to participate in various open competitions to broaden their horizons and enhance their skills in different aspects. Introduced here are two of the many competitions where they notched up impressive victories.
Students shine in Robocon 2010 Hong Kong Contest
Two teams of undergraduate students from UST School of Engineering (SENG) won 1st and 2nd runners-up in Robocon 2010 Hong Kong Contest held in June - a major inter-university contest for engineering and IT students.
This year’s theme is Egyptian pyramids and 10 teams from 6 tertiary institutions participated in the contest. Each team had to design and produce automatic and manual robots to build parts in 3 pyramids by correctly placing the blocks within a fixed time limit.
Representing HKUST were teams "Fiery Dragon” and "Eastern Dragon”.
Eric Leung Chun-Yin (Computer Science and Engineering, Year 3), group leader of "Fiery Dragon” said, "We are a team of strong cohesion. Graduates contested before would come to support us. It’s really encouraging.” New member of "Eastern Dragon" Sky Yuen Ka-Shing (Electronic and Computer Engineering, Year 3) added that the contest gave him a chance to work with fellow students from different programs which had been particularly rewarding.
The HKUST teams have an excellent track record in Robocon contest since it started in 2004, including two Champions, one 1st and four 2nd runners-up. They represented Hong Kong in the international Robocon contest twice and won a 2nd runner-up in 2005. The international Robocon contest will be held in Thailand in 2011 and in Hong Kong in 2012.
Visibly Good News for the Visually Challenged
A team of two 2010 graduates (Patrick LEE Kwan Pak and Matthew TING Kin Man) from Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (ECE) won the Merit Award with their project "Braille Embosser” in the 10th international Asia Pacific ICT Awards held in Malaysia this year out of 17 teams from 8 member economies.The same project also won the Gold Award and The Most Innovative Award in the 2010 Amway Pan-Pearl River Delta Region Universities IT Project Competition held in Sichuan in late June where teams shortlisted from about 200 universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan participated.
The Braille Embosser created by Patrick and Matthew has significantly reduced the cost of printing and raised the efficiency of turning text into Braille. The students altered dot matrix and ink jet printers with an embossing system and developed a program that changes text in word file into Braille directly. The printer can print 80 Braille characters per minute and the cost of altering a dot matrix/ ink jet printer is about $1,000 – significantly lower than a typical Braille embosser which costs over $30,000. With this invention, visually challenged people may now print documents at home conveniently.
Patrick, whose parents are visually challenged people, and his teammate Matthew understood the difficulties the people encounter in learning and they hoped to create efficient and economical learning tools for them.
Prof Tim WOO from Electronic and Computer Engineering guided the team in the competition. He said, "Engineers not only develop leading-edge technology, but also improve peoples’ lives through the technology. We encourage engineering students to make use of their professional knowledge and contribute to the society by developing useful tools or devices for those in need. |
