Sri Lankan Robotics Challenge 2019
Sri Lankan Robotics Challenge (SLRC) is one of the most glorious and iconic events organized by the Electronic Club of Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa. The 8th edition of SLRC commenced on 19th of October 2019 with the unwavering guidance of the head of the department Dr. Nuwan Dayananda, patron of Electronic Club Eng. Kithsiri Samarasinghe, senior treasurer and staff advisor of Electronic Club Dr. Ranga Rodrigo, senior lecturer Dr. Peshala Jayasekara and the president of Electronic Club Mr. Matheesha Abeysekera. This year’s event was chaired by the assistant secretary of Electronic Club Mr. Kavish Ranwella and the committee member Mr. Thushara Sampath. The event was planned to create the greatest platform for the competitors to showcase their talents.
SLRC 2019 inaugurated its golden days with the university category preliminary round. 16 teams representing universities from all over the country actively participated in this round, from which 6 teams were selected for the final round after the careful and excellent judgement made by the judges of the day, senior lecturer at KDU Eng. Udaya Dampage, Electronic engineer at Zone 24×7 Mr. Kanishka Wijayasekara and lecturer of University of Moratuwa Mr. Thilina Ambagahawaththa. A new award was introduced in this year’s challenge with the sole purpose of encouraging the competitors even more. Namely, ‘The Best Robot Design’ award was secured by the team Circuit Breakers from University of Moratuwa.
The next day, 20th of October, 2019 was dedicated for the final round of the university category where 6 marvelous teams performed head to head with each other for the championship. With the honorable presence of the judges of the day, director and head of Electronics High Tech Lanka International Mr. Salinda Tennakoon, senior lecturer of University of Moratuwa Dr. Peshala Jayasekara and senior lecturer of University of Moratuwa Dr. Tharaka Samarasinghe winning teams were selected. Team Neo-RX from ICBT Campus, Kandy secured the winning title achieving the best overall scores and the most outstanding performance of the day. Winner was awarded with a cash prize of Rs.100,000. Team Circuit Breakers from University of Moratuwa won second place securing a cash prize of Rs.60,000. Team White Walkers representing University of Ruhuna became 2nd runners up winning a cash prize of Rs.30,000. University category was a huge success exhibiting all the hard work put in by the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering to build a broad platform for the talented youth of the country. SLRC provides these youthful and fresh minds a golden opportunity to interact with peers who bear the same interests as well as industry professionals and other resource persons.
21st of October 2019 was the last day of the challenge. School category first round started off with a huge rate of participation from 52 teams representing schools around the country. Team Aloyz from St. Aloysius College emerged as the winners of the title ‘The Best Robot Design’. Final round was held in the evening with the judges of the day, lecturer of University of Moratuwa Mr. Kavisha Vidanapathirana, lecturer of University of Moratuwa Mr. Asanka Rathnayaka and lecturer of University of Moratuwa Mr.Heshan Fernando. Their substantial commitment made SLRC 2019 a triumph. Team Infinity from Maliyadeva College won the first place with a cash prize of Rs.50,000. Team Galaxy from Wycherley International School and team Neo-revolt from Maliyadeva Model School secured second and third places with cash prizes of Rs.30,000 and Rs.15,000 respectively.
SLRC 2019 concluded on a high note creating a room for wisdom to shine. It gathered wisdom from all over the country, shared knowledge and vision, encouraged the purposeful hearts and finally ended continuing the legacy of the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa.
Read MoreHonorary Mentions at the IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2019
The IEEE Communications Society holds an annual student competition, encouraging communications engineering students to expand their knowledge, test and showcase new skills, and inspire innovation. IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2019 was held with theme ‘Communications Technology Changing the World Student Competition’. Two teams; AKMA Bionics and RcubeH from the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering were able to secure Honorary Mentions (being ranked among the top 15 in the world) at the IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2019.
Team ‘AKMA Bionics’ comprised of 4 final year undergraduates, Ashwin De Silva, Malsha Perera, Kithmin Wickramasinghe and Asma Naim. Their project was titled ‘Wearable Cost Effective Wireless Dry Contact sEMG Sensor System for Controlling Digital Technologies’. Surface electromyograms (sEMG) is a biopotential recording technique by which we record a muscles’ electrical activity from the surface of the skin; which reflects the generation and propagation of Motor Unit Action Potentials. This project focuses on designing a dry contact electrode for acquiring sEMG signals from forearm, including the design and development of the interfacing systems and circuits for the muscle-computer interface (MCI), under a reasonable cost with the intention of creating a novel finger gesture based wireless interaction device using modern communication technologies. The sEMG signals acquired from the dry contact electrode system is used for real-time hand motion recognition. These recognised hand motions will be used to control different digital technologies such as a smart switch, a smart light bulb, a computer, a smartphone and most importantly a bionic arm. Current available devices for acquisition of sEMG have shortcomings in terms of design, speed, reusability and reconfigurability. The dry contact, stainless steel based electrode system presented by this team is designed in order overcome the shortcomings of the currently available sEMG acquisition systems.
Team ‘RcubeH’ comprised of 4 final year undergraduates, Ranjula Hettiarachchi , Rashinda Wijethunga, Ravindu Rashmin, Hashini De Silva. Their project was titled ‘Indoor Navigation for Visually Impaired’. At present there are over 30 million people around the world who are completely blind. Navigation at an unknown location has been one of their biggest challenges. Even though many outdoor navigation technologies have been invented to aid them in outdoor navigation, no widely adapted method has been launched to support the indoor navigation. Team RcubeH presents the idea of developing a method which uses only the proximity to a Bluetooth beacon and combines that information with mobile phone sensor data to navigate the visually impaired person along a certain route, so a major advantage of this method is number of beacons needed for a building can be reduced from a significant number. The team has developed filtering mechanisms and machine learning algorithms to obtain accurate distance estimation with high accuracy and robustness. Another advantage of the proposed method is the customizability, when the system is designed it will be adaptable to various buildings and various common features of a certain building without needing extra training/modification of algorithms. The beacons are placed strategically around limited points of interest around the building and use the mobile phones’ built-in sensors to navigate through these points of interest. The beacons are only used for marking a certain landmark and only the proximity (distance to a certain beacon) is used to for the navigation process. The main advantage of this approach is using a limited number of BLE beacons which reduces the cost by a large portion. Even though similar BLE proximity-based approaches have been taken by some researchers, the measures they have taken to increase the system’s accuracy and customizability is rather low. The team is intending to optimize the distance estimation process by implementing machine learning and filtering techniques and make the system customizable to different building environments. Once the system is developed it can be implemented in any building with a simple architectural design and a visually impaired person will be able to navigate to a certain destination inside the building. This system can be further improved to be used by the general public.
Research Paper Presentation at IEEE EMBC 2018
A research paper titled “Detection of Diabetes by Macrovascular Tortuosity of Superior Bulbar Conjunctiva” was presented at the 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) 2018 held in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA from July 17th to 21st. It was presented by Mr. Achintha Iroshan Kondarage and the manuscript was written by Mr. Achintha Iroshan Kondarage and Mr. Dulara De Zoysa. This Research was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Anjula De Silva, Dr. Nuwan Dayananda, Prof. Saroj Jayasinghe, Dr. Mahen Wijesuriya and Dr.Chamari Warnapura. This research was carried out with collaboration of three institutions, Department of Electronic and Telecommunication of University of Moratuwa, Department of Clinical Medicine of University of Colombo and The National Diabetes Center. Authors are focusing on implementation of computational methodologies to detect micro and macro vascular complexities. In this research work they have implemented several image processing algorithms and computational methodologies to compute tortuosity of blood vessels in bulbar conjunctiva using a 2D image of sclera region. They have also identified a significant relationship between diabetes and macro vascular tortuosity of bulbar conjunctiva.
EMBC is the annual flagship conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, covering a broad range of topics from cutting edge biomedical and healthcare technology research and development to clinical applications, biomedical education and entrepreneurship. It is the world’s largest international biomedical engineering conference. This research was conducted as the final year research project of Mr. Achintha Iroshan Kondarage and Mr. Dulara De Zoysa under the Biomedical Engineering degree program at Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering department of University of Moratuwa.
CEBI hosts guest talk by delegates from QUT
On the 2nd of May 2018, a talk organized by the Center for Biomedical Innovation (CEBI) on biomedical engineering opportunities was held at the Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering (ENTC) department with delegates from the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. The delegation consisted of Professor Prasad Yarlagadda, Professor John Bell, and Dr. Kateryna Bazaka who were visiting the University of Moratuwa in a bid to strengthen ties between the two institutions. Prof. John Bell and Dr. Kateryna Bazaka spoke broadly about research at QUT and Prof. Prasad Yarlagadda gave a talk on the “study of natural bactericidal surface production on titanium implants for orthopedic applications” which is one of his research focuses. Furthermore, as QUT has a strong robotics group, the delegation also spent some time with Prof. Rohan Munasinghe at the UAV lab located in the ENTC department as well as with Prof. Ruwan Gopura at the Bionics lab located in the Mechanical Department.
CEBI, a multidisciplinary research center established by the University of Moratuwa is an initiative towards collaborative commercializable research in the area of biomedical device development. Dr. Pujitha Silva as the center director, Dr. Nuwan Dayananda, and Professor Ruwan Gopura as the HoD’s of ENTC and Mechanical respectively along with other senior biomedical lecturing staff members from ENTC, mechanical and other relevant departments play a pivotal role in the progress of this center. This visit has allowed for mutual insight to be obtained on the current research trends occurring both at QUT and at UoM and has created a path for future collaborative activities.
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