Issue 1

Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering (AAE)

Retitling as Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering

We are pleased to let you know that the Interdisciplinary Division of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering was retitled as the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering (航空及民航工程學系) with effect from 1 April 2021. This will enable the department to be more prominent in the Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering research and education in HK. AAE will continue its effort in fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and developing its programmes to achieve excellence.

Joint Laboratory of Collaborative Communication, Navigation, Positioning, and Sensing setup in partnership with the Institute of Software Application Technology, Guangzhou and Chinese Academy of Sciences (GZIS)

AAE has joined forces with an institute in Guangzhou to conduct research on autonomous vehicles and intelligent navigation systems. Technological advances mean vehicles will soon be able to exchange information with other vehicles and with smart devices along the roads.

To explore innovations in this area further, the University has partnered with the Institute of Software Application Technology, Guangzhou and Chinese Academy of Sciences (GZIS) to setup a Joint Laboratory of Collaborative Communication, Navigation, Positioning, and Sensing. Dr. Hsu Li-Ta, Assistant Professor of Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, is leading a team from AAE PolyU to work with GZIS, focusing on intelligent navigation and unmanned vehicle communication and positioning, vehicle networking, and vehicle-road collaborative sensing technologies and equipment.

Research from the laboratory will not only foster the development of Intelligent Connected Vehicles (ICVs) and autonomous driving in Guangzhou, but also across other major Mainland cities, after the central government has highlighted its support for the industry in the Strategy for Innovation and Development of Intelligent Vehicles, issued by the National Development and Reform Commission of China earlier in 2020.

“Recent advances in fuel cells based propulsion systems for unmanned aerial vehicles” was awarded the 2019 Highly cited Paper by Applied Energy

The paper entitled “Recent advances in fuel cells based propulsion systems for unmanned aerial vehicles” collaborated by Prof. Chih-Yung Wen (AAE) and Dr. Liang An (ME) was awarded the 2019 Highly Cited Paper by Applied Energy, which is a peer-reviewed academic journal with an impact factor of 8.848 and a ranking of 6/143 (Top 3.8%) in “Engineering, Chemical” Subject Category in 2019 JCR Science Edition. This work provides a general description of the working principle of fuel cells and the category of unmanned aerial vehicles, introduces two types of propulsion systems that involve fuel cells, i.e., pure fuel cell system and hybrid system, describes the design methods and simulation cases, as well as summarizes the practical flight tests. Mr. Zhefei Pan, an ME PhD student supervised by Dr. An and Prof. Wen, is the first author.

Read the full text at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919303769

Research and Knowledge Transfer on Navigation for Smartphones and Unmanned Autonomous Systems

Based on several successful research collaborations between Huawei Technologies and the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering, under the support from PolyU Innovation and Technology Development Office, the Huawei consumer business group decides to build up a long-term research collaboration with the Intelligent Positioning and Navigation Laboratory that is led by Dr LT Hsu. The research collaborative agreement is called “navigation and positioning collaborative framework.” The agreement states that Huawei will invest no less than HK$ 10 million in the coming 3 years to develop the advanced positioning and navigation technologies for the applications of smartphone and autonomous driving.

The agreement was approved in June 2020. The research agreement expects to help the AAE to recruit about 10+ research assistants and PhD students in the coming 3 years. Currently, there are two research projects under this agreement. It is well-believed the AAE research can develop key positioning and navigation algorithms that can contribute to the users of Huawei smartphone and autonomous vehicle. Currently, the collaborative research achievement can serve 30+ millions of users in the world and expect to reach 50+ million in the years to come.

This is the second long-term research collaboration agreement between Huawei and PolyU. The first one is the “Joint Laboratory for Optical Interconnection Network and Advanced Computing System.”