InnovateFPGA Design Contest 21/22. Asia Pacific and Japan Region – Gold Award for Team AP116 from University of Moratuwa
Our team, AP116, comprised of Pahan Mendis, Chathuni Wijegunawardana and Pamuditha Somarathne from the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at University of Moratuwa has won the Asia Pacific and Japan Regional Gold Award at the InnovateFPGA Design Contest 21/22. We convey our gratitude to our valuable advisors, Dr.Ajith Pasqual, Mr.Abarajithan Gnaneswaran and Mr.Kithmin Wickremasinghe.
InnovateFPGA Design Contest is a competition organized by Terasic Inc. in collaboration with the Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Analog Devices, Inc., Arrow Electronics Inc., Macnica Inc., Mouser Electronics, Inc., and Digi-key Electronics. We have been invited to the Grand Finals in Intel Innovation Campus in San Jose, California where the top 12 teams from four regions in the world will present their projects.
This year, the contest focused on exploring solutions that reduces environmental impact and the demand that we place on the planet’s resources. To address this objective, our team brought forth a concept of the Green Machine, a smart, user-friendly, domestic mini-greenhouse system to enable users to grow and efficiently monitor and tend to plants with much ease. This was designed for domestic user to grow their own food in their homes. Also, due its modular design, the farmers can combine multiple units of Green Machines for cultivation in small to large scale farms. The condition within the Green Machine is monitored using a set of sensors and cameras and the sensor and image data is sent to the Terasic DE-10 Nano, a development kit based on Intel CycloneV FPGA, for processing.
The Cyclone® V SoC FPGA HPS consists of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MP Core processor and a rich set of peripherals, which gives the flexibility of programmable logic as well as the functionality of a processor (HPS). Our design makes use of the FPGA as well as the HPS optimally for acceleration and controlling.
The DE-10 Nano processes the obtained data to control the irrigation, ventilation and light needed for the plants for optimal growth and yield using a controller implemented on the Hard Processor System. Furthermore, a convolutional neural network is implemented on the DE-10 Nano to detect abnormalities in the plants. The FPGA portion was used for acceleration and was programmed using OpenCL Language.
After the processing, the sensor and image data are transferred to a Cosmos Database System on Microsoft Azure to be analyzed for further optimizations.
Through our project, we mainly focus on achieving two sustainable development goals.
Goal 2: Zero Hunger
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and production.
Since the Green Machine is automated, it can be used by anyone. As it is optimized, the food productivity is higher, labor costs are lower, and resources are saved. So, the food can be produced at a lower cost.
As the plants are grown within a controlled environment, the need of pesticides is eliminated. Therefore, the safety and quality of food is ensured which provides significant health benefits. Because of the design aesthetics, the users can gain relaxation and satisfaction. Altogether, our Green Machine is just the first step of creating a vast eco-system that empowers sustainable agriculture.
The project video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD0ctF4-nac
The project link: https://www.innovatefpga.com/cgi-bin/innovate/teams.pl?Id=AP116&All=1
Step into ENTC
A session termed “Step into ENTC” was held on March 7, 2022, to educate the prospective students on the career opportunities and higher studies. The panel of lecturers, alumni, and final-year undergraduates conducted the session.
Mr. Mohamed Afham an alumnus now with Meta, NY, discussed about the path and opportunities in machine vision and machine learning. Mr. Deepana Ishtaweera with his background on robotics, robotic education, and start-ups talked about robotics. Mr. Jathurshan Pradeepkumar, a biomedical engineering alumnus now with Harvard, shed light on opportunities in biomedical engineering. Mr. Kalana De Silva, an alumnus attached to a large-scale telecommunication organization in Singapore, spoke about processor design. Dr. Subodha Charles, a staff member with expertise in cybersecurity and embedded systems, spoke about internet of things.
The panel showed a multitude of avenues to take in becoming an engineering scientist. The session turned out to be much informative to the participants.
Second-place Winner of the ComSoc “Internet for All” Competition in the Asia Pacific Region
Sandushan Ranaweera, and undergraduate of ENTC has emerged as the second-place winner in the Asia Pacific Region in the Internet for All Competition organized by IEEE Communications Society which is one of the world premier associations for communication engineers.
In this competition the participating teams or individuals are required to submit a proposal outlining a plan to bring internet connectivity to an identified locality where a clear need of internet connectivity exists. The proposals should explain how if implemented the performance of the infrastructure will be measured, detect technical failures, risk mitigation plan and how the infrastructure will be maintained after the project duration.
Teams or individuals from worldwide were open to submit proposals. Winners were selected region-wise from Europe, Middle East and Africa Region, North America Region, Latin America Region and Asia Pacific Region. The jury picked First, Second, Third place winners with up to 5 honorable mentions per each region. Sandushan Ranaweera’s proposal which won the second place in Asia Pacific Region was outlined a project to give internet connectivity for underprivileged students in rural villages of Sri Lanka using existing common infrastructure.
The constant motivation and guidance of Dr. Tharaka Samarasinghe as the staff advisor of the IEEE Communications Society Student Branch Chapter should be appreciated here since he always encourages students to participate in these competitions. This achievement will uplift the brand name of ENTC and UoM while showcasing the practical industrial knowledge of ENTC undergraduates in international level.
Read MoreNBQSA 2021 Results
The final year project titled “Object Detection, Tracking and Suspicious Activity Recognition for Maritime Surveillance using Thermal Vision” received the Bronze award for Tertiary Students – Technology category at National ICT Awards NBQSA 2021.
NBQSA, The National ICT Awards Ceremony, provides recognition to outstanding achievements of individuals and organizations in Sri Lanka who have developed high quality ICT products and Tertiary Category – Technology targets the best quality work done by undergraduates in terms of research related to technical solutions.
The award was given for the technological solution provided when it comes to maritime surveillance in Sri Lankan borders and due to the amount of research work carried out during the project which includes a novel approach to Online Real-time Spatio Temporal Action Localization.
Dr. Ajith A. Pasqual Gets Elected as the President of the Sri Lanka Electronic Manufacturers and Exporters Association
Dr. Ajith A. Pasqual, a senior lecturer at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering of the University of Moratuwa, has been elected as the president of the Sri Lanka Electronic Manufacturers and Exporters Association (SLEMEA). The aim of the association is to uplift Sri Lanka’s electronic manufacturing industry to boost the economic contribution through electronic exports. Dr. Pasqual will use his knowledge and experience in academia and industry to shoulder this task and bring about impactful changes in Sri Lanka’s the electronic manufacturing and export industry.
Read MoreB.Sc. Engineering Honours Degree in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering Receives Full Accreditation
In response to the application for reaccreditation submitted to the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL), the B.Sc. Engineering Honours Degree in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering of the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering of the University of Moratuwa has been granted full accreditation for the intake till 2023.
According to the IESL’s official website, “[IESL] being a signatory to the Washington Accord, the four-year full-time engineering degree programmes accredited by the IESL will be considered as substantially equivalent to four-year engineering degree programmes that have been accredited by the other signatories to the Washington Accord. A signatory to the Washington Accord is empowered by the Accord to accredit only those degree programmes conducted within the jurisdiction (country) of the signatory.”
https://iesl.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=126&Itemid=170&lang=en
More information on the Washington Accord: https://www.ieagreements.org/accords/washington/
Read MoreResearch paper acceptance at IEEE/CVF WACV 2022
A research paper titled “CeyMo: See More on Roads – A Novel Benchmark Dataset for Road Marking Detection” has been accepted to the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 2022. The research was conducted by Oshada Jayasinghe, Sahan Hemachandra, Damith Anhettigama, and Shenali Kariyawasam under the supervision of Dr. Peshala Jayasekara and Dr. Ranga Rodrigo.
The paper introduces a novel road marking benchmark dataset for road marking detection in advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. Though understanding road markings is a fundamental perception task in autonomous vehicles, the development of robust road marking detection algorithms has been a challenging task in the research community due to diverse road, illumination, and traffic scenarios. The introduced dataset covers a wide variety of urban, sub-urban, and rural road scenarios with diverse illumination and weather conditions. The multiple annotation formats and the clear evaluation metrics with the evaluation script will promote novel road marking detection algorithms and direct comparison of them. Furthermore, the authors evaluate the approaches of utilizing instance segmentation-based and object detection-based neural network architectures for the road marking detection task, which will facilitate future research on road marking detection in challenging environments.
WACV is a top international conference in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition organized annually by the IEEE Computer Society and the Computer Vision Foundation. WACV 2022 will be held from 4th to 8th of January 2022 in Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA. This research was carried out as a final year project at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (ENTC), University of Moratuwa in collaboration with Creative Software Pvt. Ltd.
Team NIMA from ENTC wins 3rd place in Physionet/CinC Challenge 2021
Nima L. Wickramasinghe from the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (ENTC), together with his mentor Mohamed Athif from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University (previously an undergraduate at ENTC) has won the 3rd place in 3 categories (All-lead, 3-lead, 2-lead) in the Physionet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2021.
PhysioNet supports challenges, which invite participants from all over the world from various institutes to tackle clinically interesting questions that are either unsolved or not well-solved. In cooperation with the Computing in Cardiology conference, PhysioNet has been co-hosting a challenge annually. This year, the conference was held in Brno, Czech Republic from 12th to 15th of September in a hybrid manner. Computing in Cardiology (formerly Computers in Cardiology) is an international scientific conference that has been held annually since 1974. CinC provides a forum for scientists and professionals from the fields of medicine, physics, engineering, and computer science to discuss their current research in topics pertaining to computing in clinical cardiology and cardiovascular physiology.
This year’s challenge was to identify Cardiac abnormalities (26 scored) given the ECG data of the patients. Usually, the ECG data consists of the signals from the 12-leads. But, this year’s challenge focused on whether the same accuracy can be achieved using reduced-lead ECG data. Using a smaller number of leads would enable low-cost, portable, and user-friendly point of care devices.
The team (team NIMA) proposed a novel solution to tackle this Multi-label classification problem by creating a Deep convolutional neural network that used the time domain and frequency domain of the ECG signals to classify the 26 scored cardiac abnormalities. The results showed that reduced-lead ECG data can obtain almost the same accuracy obtained using all leads.
The team was able to obtain 3rd place in the All-lead, 3-lead, and 2-lead categories competing against 39 International teams. The 2nd place was obtained by team DSAIL_SNU, mainly from Seoul National University. And, the 1st place was obtained by team ISIBrno-AIMT, mainly from the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic.
Remarks: The collaboration between Nima L. Wickramasinghe and Athif Mohamed was facilitated by the ScholarX program from the Sustainable Education Foundation. ScholarX is a 6-month program for Sri-Lankan undergraduates who would like to get free premium mentoring during their study period.
Link to challenge: https://physionetchallenges.org/2021/
Link to video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nima-wickramasinghe-9b71a1205_innovation-research-activity-6844151633757171712–afB
Read MoreENTC Team Becomes the 2nd Runners Up of the IEEE Video and Image Processing Cup 2021
A team of undergraduate students (Team NFPUndercover) from the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (ENTC) under the supervision of Dr. Chamira Edussooriya from ENTC, University of Moratuwa, became the 2nd runner up in the IEEE Video and Image Processing Cup (VIP Cup) 2021 competition at the 28th International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) 2021. ICIP is an annual flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society which is one of the world’s premier associations for signal processing engineers, academics, and industry professionals. This year the conference was held from the 19th to 22nd of September 2021, virtually in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. The IEEE VIP Cup competition is one of the most prestigious competitions in video and image processing for undergraduate students. This year’s task was to develop a robust algorithm to estimate in-bed human poses under heavy occlusion caused by blankets and varying illumination conditions. This algorithm can be utilized for in-bed human behavior monitoring during sleep or rest state, which is crucial for prognostic, diagnostic, and treatment of many healthcare complications. Team NFPUndercover proposed a novel solution for this task leveraging multiple approaches from both computer vision and signal processing such as extreme occlusion-based data augmentation and label smoothening via knowledge distillation. Specifically, their approach is feasible to implement in a resource-constrained setup. Image Processing and Machine Vision is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that models and learns the image representations to autonomously accomplish downstream tasks such as Image Classification, Object Detection, Semantic Segmentation, etc. It utilizes advanced statistical and mathematical algorithms to make a machine see and understand the real world as humans do. This achievement by UoM places Sri Lanka at a higher position in the world of the image processing community
Read MoreUOM Emerged as the Champions of the Students Challenge in the ICAS 2021 Conference
Team DigitX, a team of ten undergraduates from the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering (ENTC) under the supervision of Dr. Chamira Edussooriya from ENTC, University of Moratuwa, emerged as the champions of the Students Challenge at the Internal Conference on Autonomous Systems (ICAS) 2021 conference. The conference was held virtually in Montreal, Canada from August 11 to 13, 2021.
ICAS 2021 is the premier international forum organized by the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) through IEEE SPS Autonomous Systems Initiative, for presenting the technological advances and research results in the fields of theoretical, experimental and applied autonomous systems. IEEE ICAS was held for the first time this year and it focused on providing an updated state-of-the-art over advanced signal processing theories and techniques that are relevant for developing autonomous systems.
The ICAS 2021 Students Challenge was on “unsupervised anomaly detection through self-aware autonomous systems”, to detect abnormal events during the navigation of a ground/ aerial vehicle. The team was able to develop an unsupervised learning algorithm with state-of the-art signal processing and machine learning techniques such as auto-encoders, recurrent neural networks for time-series data signal processing.
Based on the inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor data, video data captured by the cameras of autonomous systems in several camera perspectives and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor data (point clouds), the unsupervised model was trained to identify the normal situations that it saw during the training phase as normal and every other situation as abnormal (as per the challenge requirement a reference normal scenario was defined for each dataset). UoM won the first place while a team from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), India and a team from CentralSupelec, France won first and second runners up, respectively.
An autonomous system is an artificial system capable of performing a set of tasks with a high degree of autonomy. Developing computing systems with advanced levels of autonomy has been a crucial task for decades in order to manage ever-increasing requirements in complexity. This achievement by UoM places Sri Lanka at a higher position in the world signal processing community.
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