Beta's projects for final year students 2013—2014

Description

In bad weather, aircraft pilots have to make complex decisions quickly. For example, when there is a rainstorm near the airport in front of the Hong Kong-bound aircraft, the pilot can circle the aircraft outside Hong Kong to wait for the rainstorm to move away from the airport ("Holding" situation). The pilot can also choose to fly in a zig-zag way as it approaches the airport to delay its approach ("Slowdown" situation). When to rainstorm is near, the pilot can choose to fly around the thunderstorm so the aircraft is minimally affected by it ("Deviation" situation). It is also possible that the pilot decides to land the aircraft, which may be successful, or that the landing has to be cancelled at the last seconds when the approaching aircraft has to fly up again before it's too late so that it can go around the airport and try landing again later ("Missed approach" situation).

With time series of radar data and flight path data of aircraft a around Hong Kong, it is possible to build an automatic system to predict what the aircraft pilot is likely to do in face of different rainstorm situations. The product can be useful for the air traffic controller to estimate the weather impact and flight planning. When a pilot sees the weather in the flight, they will make their own decisions or follow the instructions from the air traffic controller. This project is about building such a system.

Description

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) has developed a series of software applications called Satellite Application Facilities (SAF), which includes modules focus on satellite based Nowcasting and Very Short Range forecasting techniques. These computer programs make use of multiple channel data acquired by satellite and perform thunderstorm and deep convection identification, analysis and forecasting.

Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) currently receives data from a number of meteorological satellites and some of them may be used as data sources for the above SAF modules. This project targets at adopting the above SAF programs for local use at the HKO.

Student taking this project is expected to:

• Design an intermediate data format for ingesting into the SAF modules.
• Implement a Converter program to convert from the above intermediate data format into native data files for use by the SAF modules.
• Implement at least one Reader programs to convert from HKO's satellite data (e.g. COMS and MTSAT) to the above intermediate data format.

Description

Despite rapid and continual development in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) techniques, subjective assessment of weather patterns based on analysis of weather systems by human forecasters still plays a key role in modern operational forecasting. In this project, the student will develop automatic algorithms for identifying and tracking key surface and upper-air weather systems from 4-D meteorological data fields spanning East Asia and the Western North Pacific, both actual and forecast, with a view to aiding real-time weather analysis by forecasters.

Description

Thunderstorms are known to display different levels of spatial organisation (isolated cells, clusters, lines, etc) under specific meteorological conditions, each capable of bringing particular weather hazards. In this project, the student will develop algorithms for automatic classification of such precipitation systems as observed on a weather radar. Conditions favourable for formation of different types of thunderstorms along the South China coastal areas will then be explored by analysis of 3-dimensional meteorological data fields.

Description

Every year, Hong Kong Bird Watching Society organizes a Bird Watching Competition. Participants form teams and watch birds anywhere in Hong Kong in 24 hours, and record the bird species seen or heard.

Currently, a web-based system is used for teams to record the bird species. It also shows statistics by team, location, and types of record (seen or heard). Teams, judges, and interested parties can access the system online during the competition. The user interaction is rather traditional, and can be improved in many ways.

This project is about the redesign and implementation of the system to improve it. For example, the improved system can show weather conditions, include a map, or a use web app or a cross-platform native mobile app for data entry. Students taking this project are expected to research on the functions of similar systems, and propose ways the system can be reimplemented.

Description

There are a number of tool kits and libraries that allow cross-platform app development for iOS and Android devices. A number of them are JavaScript- and/or HTML5-based. Few generates platform-specific source codes for their respective development platforms (specifically, XCode and Eclipse).

The project is about developing a set of tools that runs on a POSIX platform for cross-platform app development. The platform to run the tools is preferably OS X, but Linux is also possible. Windows aficionados should document the way the environment is set up in detail. The tools developed should generate platform-specific source, and yet allowing platform-specific code to be added. The method should be more elaborate than a set of tools for #ifdef kind of macro processing. The output of the tool kit or environment should be sets of source code and resources for direct compilation under XCode (for iOS) and Eclipse (for Android). The tools should allow platform-specific customization so that no or minimal change of code after code generation is needed. Design of a metalanguage may be needed so code for a task (e.g., use of location sensors) can be generated in both platforms without need to write things multiple times.

The student is expected to do some research on cross-platform app development tool kits or environments, and have some insight on how their development can be united. It is possible for students to opt for supporting only APIs of selected versions (e.g., iOS5, Android SDK version 16) or newer.

Description

Human beings are good at recognizing sounds of various types. On phone you can recognize it's the voice of your friend. When listening to music, you can distinguish that a piano, a violin and some drums are used.

The project is to design and implement algorithms for recognizing the instruments used in a piece of MP3/AAC music input by the user and showing the list of instruments used. Ideally, the pitches of individual notes of the instruments can be extracted as well.