ELEC3442 Embedded systems
Appear in the 1st Engineering InnoShow (30 April 2019)
Chair: Dr. W.L. Tam (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
Project arrangements
Dr. W.L. Tam (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
The topic and other detail (including the direction, scope, equipment needed, etc.) have to be self-proposed by each student group (@ 2 or 3 students) through a 1-page proposal to be submitted via the course Moodle website. After the submission deadline, we will identify and submit several “attractive” topics of potentially successful projects to showcase.
Tentatively, 2 exemplary projects (out of the total 6 – 8 projects) will be selected to participate in the Engineering InnoShow. They will be selected as based on a set of vigorous evaluation criteria with the inputs from the concerned course instructor, tutor, peer students, and also an external judging panel member as invited from our distinguished alumni.
The group project emphasizes on exercising students’ creativity to provide innovative solutions for solving real-world problems/issues through sophisticated technologies related to IoT or embedded systems. In addition to creativity, various practical aspects like system reliability, manufacturing costs of the overall system, system security, etc. will be considered.
After the submission deadline of the initial proposal, each team will be provided with feedback from the course instructor to refine their proposal before they proceed to detail the design, implement and evaluate the prototype for the final report & project presentation around the mid of April.
Students will learn the important skills of engineering design, and realizing their designs into practical solutions with micro-controllers, sensors, IoT technologies or embedded systems as subject to various environmental and/or physical constraints including cost, computational, time and/or other requirements. On top of the technical skills, students will learn the significant values of communication, teamwork, project management skills, etc.
All students will acquire various H/W and S/W skills and also hands-on experience on building IoT applications with the Raspberry Pi and sensors through different lab sessions throughout the semester. The group project is very important for student learning as it will help them to link up all the practical skills and learning experience gained in each lab exercise, and also facilitate students to exercise their imagination for providing innovative and valuable solutions so as to tackle real-world problems/issues, possibly related to their daily living or other people with special needs in our community.
Students will have to plan and manage each of their proposed projects with innovative uses/integration of sensors or relevant IoT technologies within the budget and time constraints.
A good project should provide innovative and well-thought-out solutions to some unique and real-world problems/issues with thorough consideration on various environmental and physical constraints including the budget, time and other domain-specific factors.
List of projects
Lumino
Guide dogs and white canes are currently the most common forms of navigational aid for the visually impaired. Though common, it is not an effective solution as there is a severe shortage of only 50 guide dogs in Hong Kong. Guide dog training is time-consuming and white canes on the other hand are limited to its length, and the true nature of the detected obstructions are unknown to the user.
Lumino aims to provide a cost-efficient one-stop solution to barrier-free movement for the visually impaired.
It is a innovative device that represents both a guide dog and a white cane by providing smart-object identification, hazard identification, real time GPS navigation with additional markers and haptic feedback.
Luxo – A personal assistant lamp
Inspired by animatronics, we built a personal assistant lamp – Luxo. Luxo is a highly customizable voice based robot who portrays it’s emotions through it’s movements and LED lamp. It was developed using open source technologies and with an emphasis on modularity. Based on Pixar’s character Luxo Jr. and Abhishek Singh’s robot Peeqo, Luxo proves to be not only a productivity companion, but also an entertainer!
Smart home system
Smart Home System is an intelligent home system implemented by different sensors and components with Raspberry Pi. It can be divided into monitoring, smart control and security modules. Monitoring module allows users to read the data from the environment, like temperature, humidity, lightness and image from camera. Smart control module allows users remotely control appliances at home automatically or manually. Security module allows users to know the current status of the home, by receiving notification if any unexpected condition is detected. By Apple HomeKit, users could integrate the system and use the above functions with their Apple devices.