On May 28, the College of Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) held a Project Achievement Exhibition where students’ engineering projects were displayed for representatives of participating enterprises to observe. These products are designed to solve the actual needs of everyday issues tackled by these organizations.

On the second floor of the SUSTech Convention Center, students demonstrated various products they had developed. “Cooperating with a company is different from doing research on campus. Companies need to consider various factors such as cost control and output,” said Yuheng ZHU, a senior at SUSTech. Their team developed an artificial intelligence low-speed driving safety alert system, a project aimed at the blind area of extra-sized engineering vehicles.

During the event, the comprehensive design project collected the results of 63 senior students, divided into 19 groups for defense and sample demonstration. The final results were based on project analysis, structural design, program writing, and functional testing.

The results show the students’ learning, communication, teamwork, innovation, and creativity abilities. As of 2021, 133 students and 33 companies, such as Huawei, Tencent, and Mindray, have completed 51 corporate projects.

The achievement exhibition was divided into two parts, the comprehensive design projects and the projects collected by the College of Engineering. Bi ZHANG, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at SUSTech, noted that the College of Engineering has been carrying out the comprehensive design project for three years.

This course replaces the traditional graduation design and focuses on the actual problems faced by enterprises through students’ self-selection of topics, team-building, cooperative research, and problem-solving. It aims to cultivate engineering leaders to solve practical problems and display teamwork spirit, engineering ethics, and an international vision.

 “Over the past three years, many participating companies have acknowledged the ingenuity of the students’ products, and more and more companies are willing to join the program,” Bi ZHANG said.

The event attracted more than 40 business leaders and representatives from companies such as Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC), Hikvision, Mindray, BYD, Foxconn, Han’s Laser, etc.

The event displayed the project by the robotics team under the guidance of Hongqiang WANG, Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering. They produced a soft robot composed of bellows and directional fibrillary pads with a special mechanical design. Driven by air pumps, the robot can achieve high efficiency and fast crawling. It is able to navigate a wide variety of terrains such as slopes, sand, and narrow roads. In addition, the robot can survive from a strong impact due to its purely soft design.

The event also featured a prototype of an unmanned underwater robot ship developed by Professor Jian LIN, Chair Professor of the Department of Ocean Science and Engineering. It is currently undergoing sea trials in order to solve the problem of intelligent cleaning of surface garbage, suspension in water, underwater settlement in rivers.