May 2021

A solar power system for producing useful fuels and chemicals from biomass waste

To design an innovative solar heating system with a solar tracking system and solar power supply system which aims to convert biomass waste materials to char products, namely charcoal, biochar and activated carbon through pyrolysis with the use of renewable energy. The fabricated solar heating system is 100% driven by solar energy and is a zero-carbon emission and conversion system. It has a short payback period of less than 7 years and it is generally economically viable, with a minimum requirement of land. It is hoped that the project will contribute to both environment and optimisation of power storage to discover cost-effective designs in the future.

Introducing SURGIVIEW: A Fast and Accurate Augmented Reality(AR) Application Supporting End-to-End Clinical Operations

SURGIVIEW is a holographic augmented reality (AR) application that can assist end-to-end surgical support for minimally invasive surgeries (MIS). This app can overlay holographic anatomic structure on physical tissue, so surgeons can see “through” patient’s body during operation. Incorporating a novel triplet-calibration algorithm, the app can achieve accurate overlay (re-projection error < 5mm) faster than most of the current strategies for less than 8 seconds. Aiming for use among medical community including surgeons, patients and medical residents, the app has multiple functions to support from pre-operative planning, intra-operative navigation to post-operative demonstration. With SURGIVIEW, we hope to develop a more intuitive and interactive future of clinical and surgery practices.

Dance with idols

Dance with idols is a music game. With only one smart phone or PC with one webcam, you can follow the tutorial and dance with virtual idols. The camera captures your gesture and the computer calculates the similarity between you and the model precisely. At the end of each song, you will see your final total score and grade. It lowers the requirement of devices but improves the dancing experience along with virtual idols.

Drones for the purpose of Long Distance Wireless Communication based on LoRa

The main purpose of this project is to develop a cost-effective surveillance and rescue drone with a longer flying time and long-range data transmission through a careful selection of industrial quality low-cost components. Our target customers are disaster relief teams which can use the drone for assistance in rescue operations through surveillance and human detection.
The drone has the following functionality:
i) Human Detection Capabilities through PIR Sensing
ii) LoRa communication channel for transmitting human detection signals back to rescue teams
iii) Auto-Level Feature to ensure stability in turbulent weather conditions
A first prototype has been developed with all the necessary functionality and is 40% cheaper than available solutions.
Our goals for the next prototype are: i) Reduce weight to improve performance ii) Design a custom PCB to make design more compact.

Delivery of medical equipment with drones

Our project seeks to alleviate some of the health threats in Southeast Asia due to limited access to roads and healthcare facilities. It suggests the use of drones to deliver medical supplies. The design of our drone service differs from existing companies because it proposes larger service areas, incoporates the idea of a telemedicine service to reduce the need to travel for medical consultation, focuses on a supplier-to-patient network structure rather than a supplier-to-hospital network structure, and suggests using public health centers and small clinics as delivery centers if patients do not have access to phones or the internet.

HKU UAS@4th Inno Show

The team design, build, and test autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS), which consist of a drone carrying a small unmanned ground vehicle for package delivery, to complete a mission that include autonomous flight, obstacle avoidance, object detection, mapping, and air drop. The complete system is expected to participate in unmanned aerial system related competition.

BREED HKU: Robotic Fish@4th Inno Show

The robotic fish project provides aspiring engineers with a platform to gain hands-on experience in applied engineering. With design innovation, we enhance the functionality of the fish to further improve manoeuvrability and control.

Our initial goal to make the robot faster and break the world record again has been achieved. Now, the second goal is to solve real-world problems. From discussions with stakeholders, we have identified an opportunity to apply our robot in data collection for marine exploration and pollution monitoring. It can be used to collect water data such as temperature, pH, etc. and also for real-time mapping and monitoring of specimens in the environment such as coral reefs, microplastics, etc.

We envision a series of such projects under the BREED umbrella to promote bio-robotics with a purpose. Ultimately, we hope to create an organisation that drives social impact through innovative robotics solutions.

A solar power system for producing useful fuels and chemicals from biomass waste

To design an innovative solar power system with a solar tracking system and solar power supply system, which comprises the concepts of applying solar energy and waste-to-energy, to convert biomass waste materials to char products, namely charcoal, biochar and activated carbon through pyrolysis. The solar power system is a zero-carbon emission system during operation and conversion. Furthermore, it is an economically viable system with a short payback period of less than 7 years with a minimal land requirement. It is hoped that the project will contribute to both environment and lead to the optimization of power storage to discover cost-effective designs in the future.

Drawing Robot and Selfie Smart Phone App

For the current drawing robot products, the users use the various apps to do the image processing and Bluetooth transmission, the operation is inconvenient and complicated. For improving user experience, there is a mobile app called “Drawing Robot Controller” is developed. Users can use the mobile app to achieve a basic moving control function and image drawing function via clicking the buttons on the app. Unlike the “Printer”, the drawing robot should be “Painter” after integrating with the mobile app. The robot can draw what the user wants in different places with different styles via this app.

Game app for pick and place 3D printed robotic arm

This project proposed to build up a “Compact AlphaGo”. For the software part, an Android chess game application was developed by Flutter with a Flask image processing server which was developed by Python. The Minimax Algorithm and Alpha-Beta Pruning constructed a “brain” to the AI which is embedded inside the Android app. A robotic arm with a chess stacker was built by the 3D modeling software AutoCAD, the cheeses were grasped by the robotic arm precisely and placed on the correct grid of the chessboard.