Hosting department

Performance of Sustainable Cement for Marine Construction

Civil Engineering, The 3rd Engineering InnoShow / By

Chloride attack of concrete in particular for marine structures is a serious global issue where it can lead to severe deterioration of the concrete, drastic reduction in strength of structures and safety concerns. The world is urging for a remedy to this situation. A green alternative to Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), Alkaline-activated Slag (AAS), is found to be having 70%-150% higher chloride binding capacity than that of OPC, making it a potential antidote to this issue. This project aimed to analyse the chloride resistance of AAS in the marine environment, to provide better predict the service life of marine structures and to find ways to enhance the durability of concrete in aggressive conditions. With AAS, let us ‘cement’ a sustainable future.

Preparing a Novel Pressure Driven Membrane with High Performance for Seawater Desalination

Civil Engineering, The 3rd Engineering InnoShow / By

Seawater desalination offers the vast potential of producing unlimited clean water. Membrane-based desalination technologies can be used to produce alternation water source. Reverse osmosis (RO) is regarded as a reliable technique for seawater desalination. Most RO membranes have a thin-film composite (TFC) structure, and the performance of the membrane is predominantly determined by the physiochemical properties of the polyamide (PA) layer. The performance and the formation mechanism of the PA layer have been intensively studied in recent years. This project aims at fabricating the TFC membrane using a support-free IP reaction, and to explore the formation mechanisms of the PA layer in the SFIP reaction system. Results show that the performance of the fabricated RO membranes is satisfactory.

Smart Product Development – AGV Robot

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The 3rd Engineering InnoShow / By

We created an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV), in the shape of a Hong Kong Tram. This AGV is able to autonomously follow, turn, and pause at a path by only given basic information about its environment. To complete this project, our team has to combine our skills in CAD modelling, 3D Printing, Advanced Machining, Laser Cutting, and Programming. Our objective in this project is to create a more fun and approachable learning tool for primary or secondary students, to learn more about the world of robotics, logistics, and automation.

Electrospun reusable nanofibrous membrane filters for environmental applications

Civil Engineering, The 3rd Engineering InnoShow / By

Our team developed highly efficient nanofibrous membrane filters for different environmental applications, including water and air purification. We utilized electrospinning as a platform to fabricate functional nanofibrous membrane filters for pollutant removal, including heavy metals, particulate matters, etc. Thanks to the high porosity of nanofibers, the filtration consumes almost zero electricity without sacrificing efficiency. Moreover, after saturation of contaminants, the filters can be easily regenerated by simple washing with daily accessible agents like citric acid and ethanol. The project aims at offering a more sustainable and healthier lifestyle for modern society. Thus, commercialization opportunities are highly welcome.

Automatic Chair Parking System

Mechanical Engineering, The 3rd Engineering InnoShow / By

Automatic Chair Parking System aims to provide a smart solution in classroom and other similar environment by helping to move and arrange chairs, while reducing the risk of occupational injuries and potential dangers related to the repetitive works. This can also reduce the reliance on labour force and ultimately improve the efficiency. The system therefore is designed to autonomously transport chairs to the designated parking area with minimal human control.

Nano-functionalized porous membrane filter for reusable face mask

Civil Engineering, The 2nd Engineering InnoShow / By

The project aims to develop a reusable face mask filter using nanofiber technique to relieve the social and environmental burden caused by current one-time using face masks. The filter consists of electrospun nanofibers with much smaller diameters (e.g., nm level), which are much smaller than the commercial filter fibers (e.g., µm level). The developed nanofibrous filter has high air filtration efficiency without sacrificing the breathe comfortability, which can be attributed to its high porosity and improved physical structure. The filter design is also highly flexible to incorporated with other physicochemical methods for further improvement of the filter properties. An impressive feature of this invention is the reusability. Simple chemical washing can regenerate the exhausted filter for further reuse with maintained high air filtration performance.

Fever screening using smartphones

Mechanical Engineering, The 2nd Engineering InnoShow / By

Every day, millions of Hong Kongers use public transport to travel across the city. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, public transport has the potential to spread the novel Coronavirus. This can be avoided if strict preventive measures are in place.

The solution to this is a non-intrusive, real time application that automates fever screening in public transport vehicles. This is made possible thanks to a mobile application that we are developing at HKU. We use a portable thermal camera and a mobile device to detect faces in a stream of thermal images, and then measure forehead temperatures. This can be done in real-time, and requires little to no manual intervention.

Playing chess with robotic arm

Computer Science, The 2nd Engineering InnoShow / By

This project aimed at building an autonomous chess-playing machine that can play chess with a human player at home. It consisted of making a robotic arm, building arm controller apps, applying openCV on the mobile phone, and building an AI chess engine.
The working logic are described as four steps. First, the phone capture an image of the chessboard. Then, it recognizes the chessboard and location and color of the piece. Next, the chess engine determines the next move and sends the command to the robotic arm. Finally, the robotic arm helps to move the piece.

Combing Physical and Virtual Gaming Experience – Hexplore Fort

Computer Science, The 2nd Engineering InnoShow / By

Since the gaming industry is becoming saturated, players tend to raise their requirements to the quality of gaming experience. Fusion of physical and virtual gaming experience may provide a fresh feeling to the players. In this project, a single-player Augmented Reality (AR) mobile game called Hexplore Fort is developed, where the players can control a spider-like robot – hexapod to adventure with the storyline in the game. Players can explore the fort that is augmented by AR by controlling the movement of hexapod, collecting items, fighting with enemies and buying assistance provided by the spy, in order to capture the princess.

Smart Email Client To Detect Malicious URLs

Computer Science, The 2nd Engineering InnoShow / By

The aim of this project was to detect phishing emails or URLs with a high accuracy. For the same, our deliverable was in the form of an improved email client that scrapes the last unread email from a user’s inbox and checks if it is safe or malicious. A series of Machine Learning algorithms were tried and experiments and research was conducted. From the results obtained, it was determined that a Balanced Random Forest algorithm after optimization in the form of algorithm tuning, training-testing split, feature analysis and other methods, was the most suitable choice for the project as it gave an accuracy of around 98% and after some experiments on optimization, it even reached a 100% accuracy.