‘Green Bus’ Offers Intelligent Route to Future
An enterprising, environmentally friendly “Green Bus” project has brought three final-year undergraduates from the School of Engineering an eYouth Certificate of Merit in the first Hong Kong Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Awards.
“Green Bus”, designed by Edward Lok Cheong-kin, Cloud Chan Shu-wing and Eric Kong Chi-kin, Computer Science and Engineering, offers a novel way to enhance the reliability and predictability of public bus services by direct monitoring of a vehicle’s location, load and efficiency. This, in turn, would allow up-to-date schedule information to be made available to passengers and help bus companies to optimize their bus routes and frequency of vehicles. It could also enable the vehicle to monitor ambient conditions and adjust its internal lighting and temperature accordingly.
The intelligent system uses eBoxll and WiFi through which a large amount of data can be gathered from the vehicle in real time, analyzed and transmitted to the bus company’s headquarters for management action. “The biggest challenge was to set up the ‘operating system’ and customize the eBoxll driver and WiFi system,” Eric said.
The ICT Awards aim to build awareness and recognition, locally and internationally, of the achievements of Hong Kong ICT professionals and organizations and help to inspire the next generation of solution-providers. In the eYouth section, awards are presented to the most innovative ICT software and/or hardware projects from full-time post-secondary students. The presentation ceremony was held in November.
Postgraduate Zhu Jinhao, Computer Science and Engineering, was another HKUST eYouth winner. He received a Certificate of Merit for his “Soul Envoy” project, which features an interactive and powerful physics-based 3D game engine. His project was also presented at ITU Telecom World 2006 held in Hong Kong in December.
About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (www.ust.hk) is a world-class research university that focuses on science, technology and business as well as humanities and social science. HKUST offers an international campus, and a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy to nurture well-rounded graduates with global vision, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking. HKUST attained the highest proportion of internationally excellent research work in the Research Assessment Exercise 2014 of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee, and is ranked as the world’s best young university in Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2019. Its graduates were ranked 16th worldwide and top in Greater China in Global University Employability Survey 2018.
