News

ISE students Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi and Mr. Li Chengxi from RAIDS Team have won the 2022 Champion Award (Bachelor/Sub-degree Level) of HKIE CA Paper Award Competition

Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi, Mr. Li Chengxi and Dr. Pai Zheng from the Research Group of AI for Industrial Digital Servitization (RAIDS) have won the 2022 Champion Award (Bachelor/Sub-degree Level) of the Paper Competition, organized by the Control Automation & Instrumentation Division of The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). Their winning paper is entitled “A Meta-Reinforcement Learning Based Control Approach for Assisting Human-Robot Collaboration in Personalized Production”, which aims to enable collaborative robots (cobots) to acquire basic skills and perform tasks based on personalised production requirements. The proposed method can improve robotic learning efficiency and quickly adapt to new tasks for human operators. Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi is currently a second year student of the BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Engineering with Management and Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS) holder in the ISE department under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. Mr. Li Chengxi is PhD students in the ISE department, under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. His PhD topics are related to the reinforcement learning, augmented reality and robot learning for smart manufacturing. Dr. Pai Zheng is currently the Assistant Professor, Wong Tit Shing Endowed Young Scholar in Smart Robotics, and Lab-in-Charge of Digitalized Service Laboratory (DSL), in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HKSAR. His research interest mainly lies in smart product-service systems, human-robot collaboration, and smart manufacturing systems. Congratulations again to the winners, and we hope they have a great success on the study and research trip.

85A Alumni Tourcation - Traversing the New Arenas of Industrial and Systems Engineering

On 23 July 2022, around 50 alumni from various disciplines and generations gathered at PolyU to join the “85A Alumni Tourcation”, an event jointly organised by the Alumni Affairs Office (AAO) and PolyU MILES Alumni Association (MILESAA), and supported by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and the Federation of PolyU Alumni Associations (FHKPUAA). Mr. Eddy Wu, President of MILESAA, and Ms. Wanze Li, Section Head (Alumni Affairs and Associations) of AAO, gave a warm welcome to the participants at the Alumni Atrium. The group first set off for the new landmark of PolyU – the enhanced main entrance, where they took good snapshots, preserving this homecoming moment. Next, they were divided into two teams for the interactive guided laboratory visit, which consisted of six laboratories in total: the State Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology, Aviation Operations and Control Laboratory, Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory, Ng Tat Lun Digital Factory, Integrated Product Design Laboratory, and the PolyU-Microsoft Enterprise Systems Centre. Apart from introducing the state-of-the-art facilities and equipment in detail, the staff and researchers from ISE also gave excellent demonstrations, amazing the participants who had been eager to know more about the daily applications of the systems. After the lab visit, the group continued to reminisce about their campus life by touring round Stephen Cheong Kam Chuen Memorial Plaza, the Jockey Club Innovation Tower, the iconic footbridge in the northeast boundary of PolyU, and finally the sky garden located on the rooftop of Block Z.

ISE students won the 1st Runner-up and Best Innovative Solution in 2022 Hong Kong Logistics Case Competition & Workshop

In the 2022 Hong Kong Logistics Case Competition & Workshop, an open competition organized by the Hong Kong Logistics Association (HKLA), Mr. FENG Zhanpeng (Jason) and Miss GOH Yong Qi (Tracy) became the 1st Runner-up of the Case Contest and won the Best Innovative Solution Award, respectively. Tracy and Jason, who are now studying the BSc (Hons) programme in Logistics Engineering with Management (LEM), visited the cold storage facility of Yamato Logistics (Hong Kong). They, with their teammates, were subsequently asked to formulate and solve operational problems based on their observations and analysis. In short, they applied the knowledge learnt from the programme to suggest several feasible solutions for improving the operational visibility and stability of storage conditions. Congratulations again to the winners and we are very proud of our students for the excellent performance in this open competition.

Camera Pointing System for China’s Lunar Exploration Missions (Chang'e 3 and 4) honoured at 2022 Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days

Project: Camera Pointing System for China’s Lunar Exploration Missions (Chang'e 3 and 4) Award: Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury Principal Investigator:  Prof. Kai-leung Yung Sir Sze-yuen Chung Professor in Precision Engineering, Director of Research Centre for Deep Space Explorations, Chair Professor of Precision Engineering and Associate Head of Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering   A Research Team led by Prof. Yung Kai-leung received the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury at 2022 Geneva Invention Expo. The team is the only university in Hong Kong taking part in the Nation’s space missions and actively developing instruments for the national space mission by leveraging its expertise in precision engineering. The award was for a project entitled “Camera Pointing System for China’s Lunar Exploration Missions (Chang'e 3 and 4)”. Installed on top of the lunar lander, it facilitates panoramic image capturing and rover movement observation on the moon, and helps construct a precision 3D model of the landscape for safe rovery. With a complex design and a weight of only 2.8 kg, it is sturdy enough to protect the camera against shock and vibration during the space mission and to ensure its proper functioning under the extreme lunar environment. The invention was completed and successfully deployed on the front surface of the Moon with the Chang’e 3 and Moon far side with the Chang’e 4 missions of China’s Lunar Exploration Programme. Please click the link to watch the video for this award-winning project: https://bit.ly/3Kbuslu   (Source: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research)   Media coverage: Sing Tao Daily - https://polyu.me/3iLkdIS Sky Post - https://polyu.me/3wKKIGg Bastille Post - https://polyu.me/3INFPyD Wen Wei Po - https://polyu.me/3tL2G9M U Lifestyle - https://polyu.me/3wKKIGg ET Net - https://polyu.me/36RwbxJ Intellasia - https://polyu.me/3Nu4Wu0 CyberCTM - https://polyu.me/3iMokEt  

RAIDS Team Won the Second Prize in the “8th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (第 8 屆香港大學生創新及創業大賽)"

Mr. Li Chengxi (ISE), Mr. Li Shufei (ISE), Mr. Fan Junming (ISE), Mr. Tsang Chin-Lok (AAE) and Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi (ISE) from the Research Group of AI for Industrial Digital Servitization (RAIDS) received the Second Prize in the “Entrepreneurship Proposal” Track of “The 8th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition”, a competition organized by the Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association, Innovation and Technology Commission, and Hong Kong Science Park. They won the award with a business plan entitled “Mutual Cognitive Human-Robot Collaborative Manufacturing System”, which was supervised by Dr. Zheng Pai. The system aims to enhance the intelligence of industrial cobots and industrial personnel with the use of the cognitive AI model and AR platform, in a human-robot collaborative manner towards futuristic human-centric smart manufacturing. Mr. Li Chengxi, Mr. Li Shufei and Mr. Fan Junming are PhD students in the ISE department, under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. Their PhD topics are related to the robot learning, computer vision, augmented reality and digital twin for futuristic proactive human-robot collaborative manufacturing. Mr. Tsang Chin-Lok is currently a final year undergraduate student from the Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering (AAE), who has been conducting his Inter-departmental FYP project under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. Ms. Kwok Hin-Chi is currently a second year student of the BSc (Hons) in Enterprise Engineering with Management and Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS) holder in the ISE department under Dr. Pai Zheng’s supervision. Congratulations again to the winners, and we hope they have a great success on the innovation and entrepreneurship road.   Related links: https://www.hkchallengeplus.com/en/ https://iec.newgen.org.hk/?p=4512  

Dr Pai Zheng was selected as one of the Top 50 Global AI Young Chinese Scholars 華人青年學者榜 (AI+X) as released by Baidu Academic

In April 2022, Dr Pai Zheng, a young scholar from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering was selected as one of the Top 50 Global AI Young Chinese Scholars, AI華人青年學者榜 (in the field of AI+X).  The list was jointly released by Baidu Academic (百度學術), Baidu (TIC) (百度人才智库), Complex Management System Laboratory of Tianjin University (天津大學複雜管理系統實驗室), and the Business Intelligence Center of the International Institute of Finance in the University of Science and Technology of China (中國科大國金院商業智能中心).   The selection aims to encourage young scholars to make more influential contributions and to identify high-potential young Chinese leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence. The selection was based on 186,963 papers and information on 89,324 scholars from all over the world, using big data mining technology.  There were three criteria in selection: academic performance, academic influence and academic potential index.  100 high-potential young scholars were selected in the classical fields of AI (i.e. Machine Learning, Data Mining, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing), and 50 high-potential young scholars were selected from the interdisciplinary fields of AI (AI+X). The 150 selected AI Young Chinese Scholars were from 98 top universities and organizations around the world. The top 10 universities or organizations with the most selected young scholars were Tsinghua University (8 scholars), Google (8 scholars), Chinese Academy of Sciences (7 scholars), Microsoft (including Microsoft Research Asia, 7 scholars), University of Hong Kong (4 scholars), Shanghai Jiao Tong University (3 scholars), Carnegie Mellon University (3 scholars), University of California San Diego (3 scholars), Columbia University (3 scholars), Facebook (3 scholars).  These scholars have made outstanding achievements in cutting-edge domains such as autonomous driving, quantum computing, dialogue systems, and biological computing, etc. Dr. Zheng is currently an Assistant Professor, Wong Tit Shing Endowed Young Scholar in Smart Robotics and Lab-in-Charge of the Digitalized Service Laboratory (DSL) in the Department. Before joining the ISE Department, he was a Research Fellow in the Delta-NTU Corporate Laboratory for Cyber-Physical Systems, in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from Jan. 2018 to Sept. 2019. He received his Dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Material Processing and Control Engineering (major), and Computer Science and Engineering (minor), from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2010, Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2013, and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 2017. References: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eNcKhmhJaZ20t-0P_yusJA https://xueshu.baidu.com/usercenter/index/aischolar2022

ISE student was awarded the Third Prize at the 2021 International 3D Printing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

Mr Weijie Xie, a PhD student of the Department of Industrial and Systems received the Third Prize at the 2021 International 3D Printing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (I3IEC). The competition is co-organized by the University Alliance of the Silk Road (UASR), the National Innovation Institute of Additive Manufacturing (NIIAM, China), and the Université de Technologie de Belfort Montbéliard (UTBM, France). Mr Xie’s award winning project is titled “Novel Bioresorbable Mg-based alloys for patient-specific implants using laser additive manufacturing”.   Project Description: The currently used materials for bone plates and screws for bone fracture healing are Ti alloys and stainless steel, which require secondary surgery to remove the implant after bone recovery. However, such secondary removal surgery puts pressure on the body, causes pain, risk, inconvenience, hospitalization and additional costs and it adds to the problem of the shortage of hospital beds especially during COVID-19. A step change is in applying novel bioresorbable Mg alloys, which are designed to be fully degraded in the human body after bone recovery and therefore removing the need for secondary surgery. The project has successfully applied laser additive manufacturing to fabricate high aspect-ratio Mg alloys parts. Such high aspect-ratio parts are difficult to additively manufacture due to the heat accumulation although they have a more similar shape to actual bone plates. The project has also applies a support structure to minimize the deformation, which is a major change from research to practical applications.

ISE student won the HKIE Logistics and Transportation Division (HKIE LTD) Best Students Papers Awards 2021

Miss LUK Hoi Yan, graduate of the BSc (Hons) in Logistics Engineering with Management, won the HKIE Logistics and Transportation Division (HKIE LTD) Best Students Papers Awards 2021. Her project title is “Intention of using Unmanned Guided Vehicles (UGV) for delivery during and after COVID-19”. The project investigates the public intention of using unmanned guided vehicles (UGV) by collecting respondents’ opinions: Attitude of implementation (safety concern, privacy concern, unemployment concern), and Performance expectancy (traceability, punctuality, accessibility, security, hygiene) under 4 different scenarios (delivering parcels with/ without COVID19 and delivering food with/ without COVID19).

State Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology featured on RTHK TV programme

The State Key Laboratory of Ultra-precision Machining Technology, established in 2009 by PolyU with the approval from the Ministry of Science and Technology, was featured on RTHK TV programme. Please visit this link to view RTHK’s TV Programme ‘IT New Era’ https://www.rthk.hk/tv/dtt31/programme/itnewera/episode/785089 (Copyright owned by RTHK) Ir Prof. Benny C. F. Cheung, Director of the Laboratory, introduced that ultra-precision machining is a technology which harnesses processing techniques like cutting and polishing in the vicinity of 1μm, 1/100 of a diameter of a human hair, to alter an object’s surface so as to equip it with new functions. The technology can be applied to multiple areas, such as optical and biomedical fields, to develop lenses with myopia management or autostereoscopy functions, and scalpels that produce sharper and smaller incisions. Led by Prof. Cheung, the research team has been conducting a series of research projects on bionic structured surfaces to develop enhanced lenses and 3D cameras.

RIAM partners with Allite on alloy R&D 先進製造研究院與鼎泰國際開展ALLITE超級鎂合金研究項目

PolyU and Allite International Limited established partnership of R&D works in a number of research projects to further explore the application horizon of Allite Super Magnesium (ASM) Alloy. This initiative aims to uncover advanced magnesium-based materials development for net shape manufacturing. This collaborative effort will also deliver differentiating R&D in the e-transportation space such as electric vehicles and e-bikes. Ir Prof. H. C. Man, Director of Research Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Dean of Faculty of Engineering, said the partnership would leverage the University’s unique strengths in R&D activities, bridging the gap between research and businesses while accelerating PolyU’s innovation efforts with magnesium alloys and processing techniques. 香港理工大學 (理大)與鼎泰國際有限公司 (鼎泰)開展研發項目計劃，旨在發掘及進一步探索 ALLITE ®超級鎂™ (ASM) 合金的近淨成形應用範圍。此計劃亦會擴展至電動運輸領域的研發範疇，如電動載運工具、電能驅動單車及其他相關產品。 理大先進製造研究院院長暨工程學院院長文効忠教授期望此合作計劃能連結研究及業界，充分發揮理大領先的科研優勢，為理大相關的新型鎂基合金用於先進製造研究和加工技術創造突破。 [From PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research Website]   Online media coverage Asiaone (English only) A-Performers (English only) ETNet (Chinese only) TechNow (Chinese only) HKET (Chinese only)