A team of Industrial and Systems Engineering students at Khalifa University has won first place in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM) Senior Design Project Competition. The team, who beat out over 100 other student projects, won for their innovative project that describes a streamlined waste collection system.

The team includes Shamma Al-Ali, Khadija Alhmoudi, Rawdha Alawadhi and Khalid Alhosani, and was supervised by Dr. Ali Bouabid, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Dr. Andrei Sleptchenko, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Their paper, titled “Improving Waste Collection & Transportation System,” describes their Senior Design Project, which is an innovative system they designed to improve the waste collection and transportation system in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with Tadweer (Abu Dhabi Waste Management​ ​Center). 

“Leveraging industrial and systems engineering principles, the students proposed a simulation-based approach to streamline the waste collection process as part of the future strategic vision for waste management in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi,” explained Dr. Bouabid. 

Team member Khalid Alhosani said, “As industrial & systems engineers, we are committed to delivering our expertise in a way that will help our society. Directly aligned with the UAE’s 2021 vision, our proposed solutions express a genuine desire to deliver positive, real-world change in the UAE. We hope that our work will contribute to the success of the UAE in increasing the percentage of treated waste.”

The KU team successfully demonstrated problem solving, creative thinking, innovation, project planning, and teamwork through a challenging design and build project. They presented their poster and paper at the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IEOM), and were awarded at the 2021 IEOM 11th Annual Conference Awards Ceremony on 11 March 2021.

“Our Senior Design Project series have been purposefully designed to showcase our students abilities and skills in real-world applications and industries, with direct benefits to the local community of service providers and supply chain enterprises. This is the second year in a row that our SDP students are recognized in international awards, which is testament to their work’s international impact as well,” said Dr. Mohammed Omar, Professor and Department Chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

The IEOM Society International is a non-profit organization that provides academics, researchers, scientists, and practitioners a platform and forum to exchange ideas and provide insights on the latest developments and advancements in the fields of Industrial Engineering and Operations Management. The IEOM conference was held in Singapore this year and welcomed competitors from more than 60 different nationalities.

With a number of waste management projects underway like this one at Masdar Institute, Khalifa University’s sustainability focused research institute, KU is helping to drive the technological and industrial innovation required to meet the UAE’s strategic sustainability goals.

Erica Solomon
Publication Senior Specialist
29 March 2021

The post Innovative Waste Collection System Wins KU Students First Place at 2021 IEOM Conference appeared first on Khalifa University.

Vertical take-off and landing aircraft, better known as flying cars, could be the future of the transport sector by enabling aerial travel services.

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A classic in the realm of science fiction and the childhood dreams of many, flying cars continue to delight and challenge engineers around the world as the idea increasingly moves toward reality. Now, a team of four Emirati undergraduate students has designed, built and implemented a fully electric flying car prototype amidst all the difficulties and obstacles of the Covid-19 pandemic. The work was presented for their KU Senior Design Project.

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Muneera Alhammadi from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department worked with Mahra Alblooshi and Khoulood Nabeel from the Mechanical Engineering Department and Omran Alhammadi from the Aerospace Engineering Department under the supervision of Dr. Reyad El Khazali, Dr. Bashar El Khasawneh, and Dr. Ashraf Al Khateeb.

The transportation sector is faced with the challenge of meeting growing demand for convenient passenger mobility while reducing congestion and improving safety. While autonomous vehicles and electric cars may contribute to these goals, they cannot ease the congestion on existing roadways. Vertical take-off and landing aircraft, better known as flying cars, could overcome these limitations by enabling aerial travel services.  

“The flying car idea started in January 2020,” explained the team. “Our main focus was to design a flying car that can take off and land vertically, which gives the driver the ability to smoothly transition between cruising and flying without a runway. We also wanted it to be fully electric to cut back on carbon emissions.”

A practical flying car must be capable of safe, reliable and environmentally-friendly operation both on public roads and in the air.

“We went through multiple phases, from researching to building and fabricating the small-scale prototype, to stability testing,” explained the team. “The stability tests were done to ensure stable maneuvering and flying.”

The team’s prototype is a remotely controlled electric flying car that combines an electric car with a hex-copter drone. It uses GPS as a navigation system and can fly for 18 minutes. While a long way from an actual flying car, the prototype demonstrates the students’ understanding of the key design concepts behind such a vehicle.

“The hex-copter is characterized by its six rotor arms. This provides a more stable flight and more power compared to quadcopters, which have four rotors, and octocopters, with eight rotors. It is more precisely controllable and has a higher payload, perfect for transporting people through the air.

“This project represents the nuclei of the future of real flying cars developed and made in the United Arab Emirates,” said the team.

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
9 February 2021

The post Senior Design Project Develops Concept for Flying Cars of the Future appeared first on Khalifa University.

To support people suffering from paralysis, undergraduate students at Khalifa University have explored how to translate brain waves into speech by using AI, specifically deep learning techniques.

Paralysis is a serious medical condition threatening the livelihoods of approximately 5.4 million people around the world. For those suffering from full body paralysis, even speaking is an impossible task to perform, severely limiting independence.

One way to overcome this inability to communicate is by tapping into a person’s brain wave signals and translating those signals into speech. Undergraduate students at Khalifa University have explored how to translate brain waves into speech by using AI, specifically deep learning techniques.

Students in the Khalifa University Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, developed an electroencephalogram (EEG) control system for disabled people to communicate with others as their Senior Design Project. The students, Ahmed Alkhateri, Mohamed Alnuaimi, Saif Alshehhi and Ahmed Alzaabi, are supervised by Dr. Kin Poon, Chief Researcher at Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), and Dr. Leontios Hadjileontiadis, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and also Acting Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering,

“Every day is a challenge for patients that suffer from full-body paralysis and we hope this project will ease their lives,” explained Alzaabi. “Our project uses EEG signals to implement a brain-computer interface (BCI) to help paralyzed patients communicate with other people freely.”

EEG represents the electrical activities of the brain with the signals captured when an individual starts thinking whilst wearing an EEG headset, which comprises multiple dry electrodes. The captured signals are then analyzed using deep learning algorithms called multi-layered Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). In this project, the ANNs used are Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a class of neural networks often used in image recognition because of their excellent compatibility with the processing of image pixel data.

For the CNN to process the data, the information extracted using the headset (in Fig. 1) is first converted into an image. EEG signals present particular wave forms (in Fig. 2) when recorded, which can be converted into a spectrogram. In this project, the person wearing the headset is presented with a grid of letters (in Fig. 3).

The grid flashes at random and a specific wave form called the P300 is recorded by the headset when the letter desired by the wearer is illuminated. A P300 shows a peak compared to baseline EEG signals and occurs approximately 300 milliseconds after the presentation of an infrequent stimulus—in this case, the flashing grid.

“Through our research, we quickly found that this idea has already been implemented, so we questioned how we could improve on it,” explained Alnuaimi. “We plan to improve by implementing a unique interface that will be more user-friendly when using the Arabic alphabet rather than English and also provide a predicted words functionality.”

The students designed a grid where every second one of the rows or columns flashes randomly. When the row or column containing the desired letter is illuminated, the P300 signal is generated. The rows and columns continue to flash until the second desired letter with the second P300 signal is generated. In this way, the algorithm can begin predicting the desired word.

The signals are converted into a spectrogram, with one spectrogram formed every second, and these images are then fed into the CNN, which can process the data it receives and determine the letter selected by the user.

“One of the main requirements of this project is to have the system work in real-time,” explained Alshehhi. “Once a letter is chosen, the program suggests some words that fit the chosen letters to ease the completion of the desired word.”

Deep learning is one of the hot topics in artificial intelligence research because it has many successful applications. Its application in recognizing brain wave signals is an up-and-coming area of research, but not without its difficulties.

“The main limitation we faced is the data size. In order to get more accurate results, we need to train the algorithm with more data,” explained Alkhateri. “For a CNN to work at an acceptable accuracy, a lot of data is required to train the system, which is time consuming. Furthermore, the device we are using has an accuracy rate of 65 percent, which, while good for its price, is still a limiting factor. Other minor limitations include the sample size we used and the processing power we have access to.”

“There are things we can do to further enhance this project,” added Alkhateri, who hopes to pursue his MSc with KU to further develop the project. “We could use a cloud service with better computational power to reduce processing time and improve performance. Users can create their own profiles online, find all their previous data and add predicted words to suit their use cases.

We could also improve the interface by allowing users to customize the interface to their needs.”

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
22 July 2020

The post Communicating with the Mind: Senior Design Project Developed to Help Disabled People Express Their Thoughts appeared first on Khalifa University.

A senior design project from students in Khalifa University’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is seeing huge success with real commercial application after winning two prestigious competitions. Senior students Abduraouf Hassan, Omar Al Mansoori and Omar Al Khoori developed a blockchain-powered smart container, called ‘CryptoCargo’, to provide real-time insights and increased transparency throughout the shipment process. Dr. Khaled Salah was their faculty advisor.

CryptoCargo was announced among the 15 winning projects in Zayed University’s Undergraduate Research Conference on Applied Computing 2020 from a total of 168 submitted. It also saw success in Dell Technologies’ Envision the Future Competition, shortlisted among the top 25 projects in the MENA region from a total of 227 projects submitted. CryptoCargo has reached the final stages of the Dell Technologies Competition and the team are looking forward to the next round.

“The CyrptoCargo project tackles the problems stakeholders encounter when damage is caused to their shipments,” explained Hassan. “Our blockchain-powered smart container aims to provide an enhanced supply chain management experience by offering real-time insights and increased transparency throughout the shipment process.”

As a shipment moves through its journey, it is susceptible to damage caused by extreme temperature ranges, humidity levels, light conditions, or passing through radiative environments. For shipments needing a temperature-controlled supply chain, housing sensitive items such as medical products, chemicals, radiative materials, meat or dairy products, for example, it is even more important to ensure the safeguarding and wellbeing of the cargo’s integrity. By continuously monitoring various metrics, stakeholders can be immediately alerted in case any abnormalities are detected. More importantly, all the data collected needs to be securely stored and made available at all times to the user, in a transparent format that eliminates any attempt at collusion, mistrust or data tampering between the involved parties.

“The CryptoCargo container is designed to monitor, track, alert, and securely store data readings pertaining to temperature conditions, container integrity, and position tracking,” explained Hassan. “Refined data is pushed to an always available cloud server, while violations are stored on the blockchain. Users can then access their shipment status from the frontend decentralized apps.

“The real-time monitoring of the shipment paves the way for more efficient shipments and reduces the likelihood of fraud. Storing violations on the blockchain’s immutable ledges provides an irrefutable guarantee of shipment quality, hence ensuring the integrity and resiliency of the data stored. It uncovers the truth of a shipment’s status, eliminates any possibilities of collusion to alter a shipment’s data, and diminishes any possible disputes between stakeholders.”

CryptoCargo is a unique and promising solution that showcases how the Internet of Things, the Cloud, and Blockchain technologies can work in harmony to solve real life challenges.

Jade Sterling
News and Features Writer
29 April 2020

The post SDP Success for Students Aiming to Make Shipping Transparent and Secure appeared first on Khalifa University.