ICT and engineering students research on show at University

The University of Malta annual ICT and engineering students final year projects exhibitions will be held once again next week, testament to the budding local research community in the technology field.

The ICT exhibition is a celebration of students’ achievements and will be presenting 62 final year projects, which promote and enhance research, development and dissemination of applied technology.

Communication and multimedia technologies are a constant presence in the exhibition. This year, students of the Faculty of ICT will for example be presenting an audit on wireless security across the Maltese Islands and solutions for mobile technologies such as data collection using a smart-phone and GPS route encoding.

A number of projects tackle important problems related to transportation and parking issues. Other projects involved work on security and surveillance systems, such as a fingerprint recognition system for person identification, a path planning system within a crowded space, and a privacy aware real estate search engine.

ICT is also promoted as a tool for improving the quality of life as demonstrated by the work in a path planning system for the visually impaired, a smart visual assistant, an anti-child abuse system, and an energy-conscious sustainable green IT framework. Consumer systems and gaming are other important driving forces in modern ICT research.

The ICT projects exhibition will be open to the public on Thursday July 5 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. The exhibition is being held in the Computing Building which is accessible from Car Park 2 located next to the campus main library.

The engineering students’ exhibition should also prove to be as interesting and innovative.

Those who think that only giants such as Google conduct such engineering developments – such as in unmanned vehicles – are grossly mistaken.

The Faculty of Engineering has various projects testing and developing similar technologies not just for ground vehicles but also for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These projects include prototypes for the accurate localisation of UAVs, fusion of sensor information for more accurate localisation and real-time ground vehicles navigation systems making use of the same technologies adopted by Google.

Developments in robotics and intelligent systems are bringing robots of all shapes and sizes closer to our households and workplaces. Even here the faculty has exciting research. Projects on tele-operation are being tested with robotic arms replicating accurately and in real-time the movements of a human.

Robotics has also found its way into medical research. The Faculty of Engineering is investigating robotics set-ups with haptic-feedback for stroke rehabilitation purposes, that is, robotic set-ups that provide an opposing force to a patient to physically simulate everyday tasks.

Further important research focuses on alternative sources of energy and its efficient use.

These and various other projects are being exhibited at this year’s final year students’ exhibition being held on Friday July 6 between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Saturday July 7 between 9 a.m. and noon at the Engineering Lecture Theatre at the University of Malta Msida campus.

An information seminar on courses being offered in engineering at the university will be held on Friday July 6 at 5 p.m.