APU TEAM CROWNED GOLD AT ITEX 2022
The APU Team from the Center for Research and Development of loT (CREDIT) has once again achieved a remarkable feat by winning the Gold Award at the 33rd International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition (ITEX 2022). This time with the project of a Firefighting Drone capable of autonomous flight, demonstrated their dedication to creating innovative solutions in the field.
Led by Rabah Anakkachery and comprising Mechatronics Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and Computer Engineering students from CREDIT at APU, the team invested 12 months in meticulously constructing this winning drone. Their mentor, Ir. Narendran Ramasenderan, expressed his enthusiasm for the project’s objective of minimizing harm to civilians and property by providing an autonomous drone solution with laser-guided sensors and artificial intelligence to aid in evacuation and firefighting strategies.
By recognizing the unique advantages of drones in reaching inaccessible areas swiftly, the team focused on developing an autonomous flying platform that could enhance information gathering and surveying for firefighting operations. The Firefighting Drones act as scouts, deploying fire extinguisher retardant balls and utilizing an Al swarm model with cloud analytics of loT sensor data to help strategize the best routes to save and evacuate victims of the fire. The coordination that the technology offers with manual firefighters’ ground stations maximized the drone’s firefighting capabilities, and increased efficiency in helping them handle fires.
APU’s team was honoured with the gold award for their ability to map out large-scale fire incidents, coordinate firefighting efforts between humans and drones, and demonstrate creativity in remotely extinguishing fires from a safe distance. The guidance and support provided by Prof. Dr. Ir. Ts. Vines Thiruchelvam and Mr. Krishna Ravinchandra were also acknowledged and appreciated for their consistent support for this winning trio.
SAVING LIVES WITH FLOOD-ASSIST DRONE: A BRAINCHILD OF MULTIDISCIPLINE ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT APU
At the recent Intel Industry-University Challenge 2022, the Grand Prize was successfully held by Team Delta APU. Made up of engineering students Ng Jo Kiat, Ryan To Han Ji, and Aaron Raj Bhatti (mentored by Ir.
Narendran Ramasenderan) and their creation of the Flood-Assist Drone. This system innovatively uses drones, the Smart Disaster Application, and LoRa sensors to give relief teams important information like location and water depth during floods. The team’s success was praised as they showed off their technical skills by making autonomous drone systems and integrating them with Al through a smart app, showing their ability to solve problems and
troubleshoot hardware-software integration problems
Supervised by Ir Narendran Ramasenderan, who has won awards for making drones and is a Senior Lecturer at APU’s School of Engineering, mentioned how their success shows how hard they work and how creative they are.
Their project stood out in the Smart Disaster area of the national innovation challenge, which focused on using loT and Al to create useful solutions for Smart Retail, City, and Industrial Solutions. With teamwork and a multidisciplinary approach, the team was able to build the Flood-Assist Drone from scratch. They did this by using the resources at APU and integrating the Intel Open VIN Solution for optimizing and deploying Al inference Team Delta APU’s win at the game not only proves their technical skills and ability to solve problems, but also helps them get ready for their future careers. Their Grand Prize win of approximately RM10,000 which consists of five units of Microsoft Surface Laptop Go for INTEL CREST 2022 shows how their classroom and research training can be used in the real world, as they created a pilot prototype deployment in an industrial setting. With special thanks to the team, Mr Krishna Ravinchandra, and the rest of CREDIT members, APU and CREDIT aims to further inspire its students to create new winning ideas, and bring them to life.