Over 100 final year students displayed their innovative final year projects to hundreds of external sponsors, visitors and UKZN staff at the annual the Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering (EECE) Open Day at Howard College.

The Open Day event provides UKZN final-year students a platform to display their projects to and seeks to showcase the student’s ability to apply the knowledge acquired through their engineering training innovatively so that they create solutions to problems in our societies.

‘Open Day is a very important day in the School of EECE. This is the last event in the undergraduate curriculum for the majority of our students who are in their final year of study. Students are displaying their Final Year Design Projects to parents, sponsors and the public. We trust that you will enjoy the day visiting the various laboratories, where our students are exhibiting their design projects’ says Discipline academic leader, Dr Leigh Jarvis.

The Final Year Design Project forms the pinnacle of the design activities in the four-year degree programmes.  The design projects undertaken by the students are a test of their individual abilities to survive as a design engineer. Working alone for the first time, with limited supervision, they are required to meet individual design specifications associated with each project. The projects on display are the result of five weeks of intense design.

The designs presented on the day included a lung cancer detector, a smart blind stick, kites for wind energy generation, smart glove for mute people, a greenhouse system and much more.

‘It was a long and challenging experience but it all came together in the end and I am happy with the outcome,’ said Mr Shane Dewar, who won the best final year design project for Computer Engineering for his Leaf Features Based Plant Identification using Deep Learning system.

Mr Craig Johnson’s project that involved designing an image capture system that takes input from multiple cameras on mobile platforms and combines them to form one macro image, won him the best final year design project for Electronic Engineering.

Mr Tremaine Krishna received the KZN-SAIEE best final year student in power systems in Electrical Engineering for his innovative Remote Control of an Inverted Pendulum design.

‘Our discipline is grateful to industry for the prizes they generously donate. These prizes give our students an incentive to strive for excellence’ says Dr Jarvis.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) School of Engineering’s disciplines has continued to receive accreditation with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), following an assessment of its Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BScEng) undergraduate programmes earlier this year.

‘The year kicked off with a successful ECSA accreditation visit, which is effectively an ‘audit’, keeping quality at its highest level. We are very proud of our international accreditation awarded by ECSA; and assure all parents, students, sponsors, industrial partners and well-wishers, that we will always endeavour to maintain full accreditation status’ says Dr Jarvis.

Words: Zolile Duma

Photographer: Albert Hirassen