CIVL Team Wins the Platinum Award in HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2022

Team AutoSafe, comprising Prof. Jack Cheng, Associate Head and Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his students, Mr. Michael Abner (MPhil graduate), Mr. Pak Him Leung (MPhil student) and Mr. Kok Yiu Wong (PhD student), has won the Platinum Award (Champion) at the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2022.

The competition, organized by the HKUST Entrepreneurship Centre, provides a platform of integrative learning experience for HKUST and surrounding community members to create and evaluate new business ideas and models and to prepare students for a career in entrepreneurship. This year’s competition focused on health and environmental safety, with a total of 175 teams formed by HKUST faculty, students and alumni, as well as members from other local and overseas institutions entering the competition.

Team AutoSafe’s winning project designed and developed an AI system to improve construction site safety. The system uses cameras to track the movement of people and automatically conducts risk assessment. Warning lights are activated once a risk has been detected automatically using computer vision and AI, and the system will send an SMS to alert site personnel of the hazard and to remind them to pay attention to safety. Project managers can also refer to the data for future analytics to improve site management. With the system, which has already been applied to projects relating to government work sites, Team AutoSafe hopes to further enhance construction site safety and awareness, and to reduce the number of accidents through collaborating with the industry.

Congratulations to Team AutoSafe!