This project aims to develop a set of technologies to achieve convenient-to-use mobility support for the elderly. Our walker has three fundamental functionalities that do not exist or not well supported by (smart) walkers in the market: smart walking assistance; falling prevention and support; autonomous mobility.
More than 30% of the population in Hong Kong will have an age of 65 or more by 2037. It is important to encourage more helpers, who can be elders themselves, to help others voluntarily. This will not only alleviate the shortage of helpers required for elderly care services, but also enables “healthy ageing” and establishes a “mutual-help” culture.
Current surface disinfection methods include spraying chemicals or using UV light. However, it is difficult to directly spray liquid chemicals on surfaces due to the threat of negative environmental impacts and possible damage and contamination to various surfaces such as books and food packages. Currently, UV based disinfection lights are either wall mounted or operate on mobile bases. Moreover, they are often positioned metres away from surfaces that require disinfection.
The housing shortage is a well-recognized challenge in Hong Kong. To meet the huge and growing needs, productivity and on-time delivery facilitated by modern building technology and decision support platforms in housing projects are crucial. Besides, e-commerce has grown very fast recently. Professor Huang’s team developed cyber-physical systems including both hardware and software solutions for construction and e-commerce logistics industries.
Human skin can sense subtle changes of both normal and shear forces as well as perceive stimulus with finer resolution than the average spacing between mechanoreceptors. By contrast, existing tactile sensors for robotic applications are inferior, lacking both accurate force decoupling and proper spatial resolution. This project aims at developing skin-alike soft tactile sensors based on principles of magnetic fields.
Low-grade heat, which is abundantly available in the environment and even in human body, is always wasted without use. Direct Thermal Charging Cell (DTCC) is invented for efficient heat-to-electricity conversion yielding a conversion efficiency over 5%, which surpasses all existing thermo-electrochemical and thermo-electric systems in low-grade heat regime.
The sewage testing tool for SARS-CoV-Z virus was invented by an inter-disciplinary team led by Professor Tong Zhang, from the Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Laboratory of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering.
The fluidic processor resembles a “magic” optical hand that can navigate, fuse, pinch, and cleave fluids in lossfree manner. Fluid placed on the device beads up like a marble and readily rolls without residue. By illuminating laser on the platform, a wavy force field is generated, acting as an invisible hand to touch and manipulate fluid.
How is the emerging new SARS-CoV-Z transmitted? This has been one of the major challenges for effective intervention since the COVlD-19 pandemic emerged in late 2019.
Following our continuous environmental studies of infection since 2003 SARS epidemics, our team immediately explored our long-held hypothesis that short-range inhalation transmission might predominate the spread of most respiratory infection.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.