AUD wins IEEE senior design competition with library robot project
57 Teams from across the UAE participated
The School of Engineering at The American University in Dubai (AUD) recently organized the 4th IEEE Student Day on campus. More than fifty-seven student teams from different universities across the UAE participated and competed in various competitions, including the most coveted prize: the IEEE Senior Design Competition.
The event, which was held under the auspices of the UAE Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), rotates annually among universities in the UAE. In addition to AUD’s teams, this year’s IEEE Student Day brought together student teams from The American University of Sharjah (AUS); Ajman University of Science and Technology (AUST); United Arab Emirates University (UAEU); BITS Pilani Dubai; Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT); Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR); Michigan State University-Dubai; Petroleum Institute (PI); and The University of Sharjah. The teams participated in competitions and workshops under the supervision of engineering professionals and faculty members from all participating universities. The organizing committee was chaired by Dr. Colin Christy, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at AUD, with participation by Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty from AUD. More than 85 faculty members from different universities advised the participants and assisted with judging the various competitions.
The jury, consisting of professors from all participating universities, ranked the projects based on factors such as innovations, design, operation, and functionality. For the third year in a row, the first place in the Senior Design Project Competition was won by AUD Electrical and Computer Engineering students Saeed Samadi, Osama Muhammad, Toufik Zitouni and Ibrahim Diab. The team’s Library Robot RFID System featured a fully operational autonomous robotic system that tracks books on library shelves and compares the compiled list of available books against the library’s database to generate a list of missing and misplaced books. A team from the American University of Sharjah came in at a close second for designing a Signal Harvesting System that utilizes ambient electromagnetic waves from cell phones to energize low power devices such as calculators. The third place went to students from the Petroleum Institute for their Power Systems Stability Control project.
Commenting on the event, Dr. Ashmawy says:
“This is a moment of great pride for the School of Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The fact that AUD students have placed first in the IEEE senior design contest for a third year in a row is a reflection of the quality of our programs. But more importantly, it was refreshing to see more than three hundred students from ten universities across the nation engage in inter-collegiate educational exchange and showcase their technical competence. Congratulations to all the teams, and hats off to Dr. Christy and the AUD organizing committee.”
At the conclusion of the event, the steering committee announced that next year’s IEEE Student Day will take place at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. This year’s event was sponsored by the Dubai Cable Company (P) Limited (Ducab).
