May 2022

Undead Unalive

Undead Unalive is a fun to play first person 3D survival horror game. The game is set in a dystopian future where Kobid-19 (covid spoof) has taken over the world and unleashed an outbreak of blood thirsty zombies. Further, to incorporate elements of covid into the game, we replaced guns with vaccines, and included face masks that would allow the player to dodge the cough particles exhaled by the zombies. The game implements a huge map with multiple zombie zones. Additionally, we added cutscene animations at the start of the game, implemented user interfaces, score multipliers and audio to create an immersive experience for the player.

Cellsverse

Cellsverse is a multiplayer game. It is of best of 3 format. We provide three maps for players, namely lung, liver and heart. Players can increase their strength by eating the nutrients that are randomly spawned on the map. Players can attack their opponents by either gun shooting or melee. They can also use different abilities which costs mana. When the hit point decreases to zero, the player dies and the game proceeds to the next map. Each map have their own features and map design to mimic the actual human organ. Through this game, we hope players can immerse into the game world, and knows more about the battles between the immune system and the virus that happen in their body every day.

Uni Fighters

Uni Fighters is a game that we have made for the course COMP3329 – Computer Game Design and Programming. It is a 2.5D fighter game set at the University of Hong Kong, portraying a student who gets into a fight for bumping into his schoolmate. Players will play as a student to fight against the opponent using combat mechanics. We created all the models by ourselves in Blender, including the characters and the map, as well as other assets such as shaders and particle effects using tools like Unity’s Shader Graph and VFX Graphs.

Soft Body Manipulation with Differentiable Physics

Dynamic state representation learning that can accurately describe dynamics can significantly accelerate reinforcement learning training. However, deformable objects have very complicated dynamics and high DoFs. We propose DiffSRL, an end-to-end dynamic state representation learning pipeline that uses a differentiable physics engine to learn the representation of deformable objects. Our specially designed loss function can guide neural networks to be aware of dynamics and constraints. We benchmark the performance of our methods as well as other state representation algorithms with downstream tasks on PlasticineLab. Our model demonstrates superior performance most of the time on all tasks. We also demonstrate our model’s performance in a real-world setting with two manipulation tasks on a UR-5 robot arm.

Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Wearable Self-Powered Electronics Applications

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a new promising energy harvesting technology that can produce electrical energy. A TENG makes use of the coupling effect of triboelectrification to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. This project aims to design and fabricate a wearable TENG that can be mounted on the human body as the electrical power source of electronics. With the aid of energy harvesting technology, a self-powered load-suspended backpack is developed and it can detect shoulder misalignment. Meanwhile, the load suspended system allows the reduction of vertical oscillation during the walking motion.

Development of compact cell-assay platform for democratizing microgravity cell biology research

Space tourism and travel is coming to reality very soon thanks to the development by SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. It is expected to have more people going up to space. EuniceScope is a compact 2D clinostat system with an in-built brightfield microscope to study the morphological change of biological cells. Physiological effects of microgravity have been proved influential, with degrading effects on bones, skeletal muscles and blood cells; and various stimulating effects on stem cells. It is thus of pivotal importance for investigating space travellers’ health on cellular level. The current ground-based microgravity simulating platforms for biological studies are bulky, lack reconfigurability and continuous monitoring. EuniceScope has advantages of lightweight, compact, a high degree of reconfigurability and democratization, filling the gap of current systems’ limitations. High imaging quality and microgravity simulating performance are achieved. Thus, EuniceScope holds huge potential for further development, including tissue engineering, democratization and application to different fields.

Investigation on the feasibility of using completely decomposed tuff as a river sand substitute for concrete production

In light of the unsustainable provision of river sand in Hong Kong and the limitations of existing river sand substitutes, Hong Kong urgently needs to discover new river sand substitutes to meet the growing demand for concrete. Hence, this project aims to investigate the feasibility of using “CDT sand” in completely decomposed tuff (CDT) as river sand substitute for concrete production.

Supply Chain Management using Blockchain and NFT

Supply chains containing complicated networks of producers, transporters and consumers have played an integral part in the expansion of online and offline businesses worldwide. With so many stakeholders, Supply chain visibility which is the ability to track different goods at each point has become essential. With increased visibility, businesses can optimise their supply chain while consumers can ensure the ethicality of their sourcing practices. However due to inefficient solutions, business owners report poor visibility facing 20% loss in goods annually, whereas most consumers would be willing to pay an extra 2-10% for traced products. Goodchain is a platform consisting of web & mobile applications which provides transparency and traceability in the supply chain through the use of NFT and blockchain. By solving the inefficiencies while catering to all stakeholders in the industry, Goodchain aims to disrupt the supply chain management industry and add immense value to all its members.

Machine Vision for Urban Farming Applications

The flowers of strawberries are insect-pollinated flowers that require insects to pollinate in the nature environment. However, insects will not be found in indoor hydroponic farms. Strawberry flowers require insects for the pollination process. Therefore, manual pollination is required since insects cannot be found in the indoor hydroponic lab.

In order to reduce the manpower and enhance the automation of urban indoor hydroponic farming, an autonomous pollination system will be developed for Vegetable Marketing Organization (VMO). This application applies YOLOv4 for detecting the strawberry flowers and for classifying the color of anthers. Also, this system includes the flower growing tracker, which can record the growing situation of the flower for the research fields related to planting.