CUHK Engineering Recognised in the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva

2021-04-10
Media Release
Scientific innovations developed by Faculty of Engineering, CUHK received recognition for outstanding performance in the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva 2021. 
 
Summary of CUHK Engineering award-winning projects:
 
Gold Medal:
Self-powered smart watch and wristband enabled by embedded generator (link to press release)
 
Members: Professor Wei Hsin LIAO, Dr. Mingjing CAI and Dr. Jiahua WANG, from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
The limited battery life of smart watches and wristbands remains a pain point. The research team has designed an embedded and compact electromagnetic generator that can self-power wearable gadgets. Unlike existing products, the invention uses a novel magnetic frequency-up converter and harnesses the kinetic energy of human motion. The converter transforms the low-frequency arm swing to achieve the desired output power.
 
Gold Medal:
Highly Sensitive Gas Sensing and Control System (link to press release)
Members: Professor Wei REN, Dr. Ke XU, from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
The research team has invented a portable and highly sensitive gas sensing system that can provide a variety of information about the concentration, temperature, and pressure of multiple harmful gas components such as CO, NOx, NH3, SO2 in real time. It has adopted an advanced laser spectroscopy technology and artificial intelligence algorithm allowing direct application to the fields of environmental protection and medical treatment, including exhaust monitoring in power plants, the petrochemical industry and vehicle emission, as well as components monitoring in patient breath.
 
Silver Medal:
Soliste – A Social Listening System for Understanding Your Customer
Members: Professor Kam Fai WONG and Dr. Gabriel FUNG, from the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Faculty of Engineering
 
Silver Medal:
Harvesting energy from walking human body (link to press release)
Members: Professor Wei Hsin LIAO, Dr. Fei GAO, Gaoyu LIU, Brendon Lik-Hang CHUNG and Hugo Hung-Tin CHAN, from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
 
Bronze Medal:
QuickCAS: An easy-to-use analysis system for quick detection of infectious pathogens in clinical samples (link to press release)
Members: Professor Li ZHANG, Dr Lidong YANG and Wai Shing LIU, from the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Faculty of Engineering; Professor Joseph SUNG, Emeritus Professor of CUHK; Dr. Sunny WONG, from the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine; Professor Philip CHIU, Dr Kai Fung CHAN, from the Chow Yuk Ho Technology Centre for Innovative Medicine, Faculty of Medicine; Professor Margaret IP, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine
 

The embedded energy harvester in smart watch and wristband, developed by the research team led by Professor Wei Hsin LIAO, receives the Gold Medal.

Professor REN’s research team is collaborating with power plant companies in the mainland China to apply the gas sensing and control system.

Professor Liao (right) and his Postdoctoral fellow Gao Fei (left) develop this energy harvester device in six months’ time, and the device is extremely light with only 307 grams.

The first generation of microrobotic detection system, “QuickCAS”, aims at detecting Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a common pathogen of nosocomial infection.