Augmented reality, self-driving cars and a geodome managed by secondary school students were in the spotlight at the annual Engineering Expo at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS).

In its third year, the expo at the Athlone campus provides a platform for students and researchers to come together, foster collaboration and celebrate engineering excellence.

Among the highlights was an exhibition involving an autonomous vehicle where  PhD researcher Guilherme Gomes explained his steering-wheel prototype and how it can be used in detecting blind spots.

Also on show was the Geodome Project by transition students from the midlands who are developing systems that track and control key environmental factors, including air quality, moisture, temperature regulation, light levels, airflow control and automated irrigation.

There were 130 undergraduate and 23 PhD student posters on display at the exhibition on Thursday, April 10th.

When it came to the Computer and Software Engineering projects, the winner in Software Design was Fabrizio De Fiore for ‘Danger Detection and Cloud-Based Vocal Assistance System for Visually Impaired User in Augmented Reality’.

Joanne McMenamin had the best project in Applied Computer Hardware for her entry: ‘An AI-Driven Dementia Assistant Towards Safer & Independent Living’.

For Applied Networking, the award went to Kevin Stephens for his project on ‘Network Intrusion Detection System using Machine Learning’.

Sukrit Roy Chowdhury had the best taught Masters project: ‘Monitoring Mental Health using Cognitive Science; Astress Detection Approach’, while Samantha O’Sullivan had the Best Poster for a Research Student.

In the Mechanical and Polymer Department, the winners included: Douglas Felce, Kristof Racz and David Mata Manzano.