Electrical and Electronic Engineers at the 2023 Great Exhibition Road Festival

The annual festival of arts, science and culture took place last weekend, with students and staff from our department showcasing their latest work.

Electrical and Electronic Engineering research and student projects featured among the hundreds of activities, experiments, interactive displays and workshops aiming to inspire Festival visitors of all ages.  

As well as meeting future generations of scientists and engineers, we also welcomed back alumni, as the EEE Class of 1970 returned for a reunion visit and tour of the Department.

A huge thank you to staff and student volunteers for sharing your passion for engineering, and to all our visitors who helped make this such a brilliant event.

Check out some of our photographs from a wonderful weekend:

Gripping robots

Third year undergraduates were on hand to demonstrate their Robotic Manipulation project work. In this module, taught by Dr Ad Spiers, students learn how to design, model, and control robotic arms and gripping 'hands' to perform tasks involving manipulating objects and drawing.

The demonstration included an arm that is able to solve the well-known ‘Tower of Hanoi’ puzzle, which sorts discs according to size. The arm doesn't rely on cameras or other sensors to identify the pieces, it can perform the task using touch alone.

Also featured was a robot arm with an ‘automatic gripper changing system' where the arm can automatically choose and replace its own gripper depending on the task assigned, without human input.

Our students said they really appreciated having the opportunity to share their love of robotics, meeting children who were wowed by the demos, as well as "parents that were passionate about technology, whether or not they had a background in STEM."

Smart wheelchair

Also in the Smart Machine Zone in the Queen's Tower Rooms, visitors had the opportunity to check out the navigation capabilities of our Personal Robotics Lab's autonomous robotic wheelchair, including the latest research developing thermal sensing to help users detect pedestrians.

Researcher Dr Xingchen Zhang reported that as well as really enjoying trying out the wheelchair, festival-goers asked some very interesting questions about whether the technology could avoid dogs and cats that might suddenly appear in its path, and how a destination could be specified through speech recognition or Google Maps. "Some visitors also had fun attempting to outsmart the thermal pose recognition algorithm."

Save the city

At the KIOS Virtual City’s power substation, visitors were challenged to take part in a disaster simulation and save the power, transportation and water networks and keep citizens safe.

The KIOS project, which is working to make our infrastructure networks smarter and more secure in the face of danger, is a collaboration between the University of Cyprus and Imperial College focused on the Monitoring, Control, Security and Management of Critical Infrastructures, including large-scale, complex systems such as power and energy systems, water systems, transportation systems, telecommunication networks and emergency response systems. The Imperial team is led by Professor Thomas Parisini from EEE.

Dr Radu Rautiu, Head of Research Project Management, Enterprise, said that their many visitors to the Smart City demonstrator included lots of alumni, and they were also very pleased to welcome (centre) Marios Theocharous — Cultural Attaché, and (left) Niki Savva — Finance Counsellor from the Cyprus High Commission in the UK.

Creating protest