Commitment to Community

The HKUST Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) Sub-team, which consists of 14 HKUST students from different disciplines, won championship in Explorer Class in the 9th Hong Kong/Asia Regional IET/MATE Underwater Robot Challenge in April. This is the fourth time that HKUST has won the championship.

Other than participating in the competition, HKUST students also integrate their engineering knowledge in community projects. This year, the ROV Sub-team provided training workshops for children in the Ebenezer School and Home for the Visually Impaired in Hong Kong to promote engineering knowledge to all levels of society.

Ebenezer School organized the Science Week in November last year, inviting the group of HKUST students who designed the underwater robots to speak at the school and share their project experience. The talk had aroused students’ interest in the engineering project. The school students decided to form a team of 12 to participate in the competition to design a robot with practical assistance from HKUST teaching staff and students.

Despite their visual impairments, the school team managed to complete the engineering task and gained valuable learning insights and experience. The HKUST team proposed a water pump design to replace the propeller system to ensure a safe working process when building the robot.

Under the mentorship of the HKUST students, the team from Ebenezer School won 1st Runner-up in Scout Class in the competition.

“We are very encouraging to see that the visually impaired school students won the prize the first time they participated in the competition. They showed good team spirit,” says Director of Center for Global & Community Engagement at HKUST School of Engineering Prof Tim Woo, who is also the supervisor of the group of HKUST students. “I hope to see HKUST to participate in more of these related activities to integrate engineering knowledge in social projects and services in the near future,” he adds.