The Aerospace Engineering Hub aims to support the Diploma in Aerospace Electronics (DASE) and address the needs of the industry. It is one of the core Technology Hubs in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Singapore Polytechnic. The hub focuses on Aerospace related projects for student learning and working in the area of Unmanned Aircraft (UA). It is a project development and training hub with technical support from the academic staff who are actively involved in teaching and projects.
This hub consists of various laboratories including Electrical Systems, Servo Mechanisms and Electronics, Electrical Fundamentals, Flight Simulator and Maintenance Trainer, Avionics Store, Automatic Flight and Electronics Systems, Communications and Navigation Systems. It also has aircraft facilities (i.e. King Air B90 and Hawker 700A) and an A320 full-motion flight simulator.
We are seeking collaborations with industry and academic/research institutes in internship programmes, industry and applied research and development (R&D) projects in the area of Aerospace.
The Aerospace Engineering Hub is located at level 4@T18A, Singapore Polytechnic.
Backed up by the vast experience of the members, the Aerospace Engineering Hub provides technical consultations, training, seminars and project collaborations to government agencies, educational institutes, businesses and industry partners in the following
technology areas:
In addition, we also provide customised courses to retrain and upgrade manpower for the relevant industries.
Project Showcase
The Aerospace Engineering Hub promotes a wide array of applied R&D projects undertaken by students and staff. Some of the achievements and past projects are shown below:
Development of Unmanned Aircraft for building inspection
The need to do building inspection is a statutory requirement in Singapore. As there are many high risk buildings, the risk of falling from heights is a real problem. In this project, the team used an Unmanned Aircraft (UA) for building façade inspection. A UA was used for data capture and automated detection techniques were implemented using computer vision technologies.
Development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle System Capable for Tunnel Inspection To Identify and Localize Defects
Long tunnel inspection is tedious and labour intensive. The working environment in the tunnel is quite challenging and if established tunnel entry procedures are not followed by maintenance personnel, consequences can be serious, especially during engineering train operation. In addition, inspection of tunnels is usually carried out at night during engineering hours to prevent disruption to the operation of passenger trains. Therefore, autonomous unmanned-aerial vehicles (UAV) are receiving great attention in these applications to reduce manpower access on the track and also to ensure the safety of maintenance personnel.
The project focuses on the unique application, inspection and surveillance for maintenance of large infrastructure assets such as MRT tunnels. For this specific application, the goal is to provide feasible technical solutions for periodically inspecting and detecting structural features that might indicate the potential for failures.
In this project, a quadcopter capable of flying in the MRT tunnel, with lighting and 360 degree camera system, has been built. The recorded camera images can be processed for visualization and interactive inspection using Virtual Reality Goggle.
3D Modelling of SERS site
In this project, the students created a 3D Model of the HDB site that has been selected under “The Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme”. Between the period of residents vacating their units and demolition, HDB has to make sure that the flats and not vandalised. A 3D Model of the site is created for detailed analysis on computers.
Virtual SP Modelling
In this project, students work to create a 3D Model of the Singapore Polytechnic campus using images captured using a COTS UAV. Using Bentley Contextcapture, a 3D Model can be easily created by the team. There is no need to use expensive 3D Laser Scanners and skilled workers. This project clearly demonstrates a novel work method.
UAV for beehive destruction and rooftop inspection
In this project, students created a drone that can greatly simplify the job of Pest Controllers. Previously, Pest Controllers has to don heavy gears to prevent bee attacks when they spray chemicals at beehives. In addition, they have to scale great heights to check for stagnant waters and mosquitoes. The drone allows them to do both.
Awards
The DASE students have won many awards in various national and international competitions, such as Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition, RoboCup, Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Challenge, etc. Details can be found in
https://www.sp.edu.sg/engineering-cluster/eee/courses/full-time-diplomas/aerospace-electronics/achievements