OUSL Student Wins the Manamperi Award 2015 for the Best Inter-University Final Year Undergraduate Projects in Engineering

Title of the Project : Vehicle Notifier for Deaf
Project Supervisor : Mr. D.N. Balasuriya
M.R. Hasitha Eranda Bandara, a student of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

In walking along the road and crossing the road, deaf people have to face a lot of troubles due to the deformity inherited from their birth. Therefore, sometime this trouble may pave the path to an accident. Under such situation, an assisting device is highly recommended to overcome these troubles. These assisting devices which is available in the world produced in other counties, to overcome these problems, are very expensive. This Vehicle Notifier is an important device which helps the deaf people to understand sound coming out from the rear side and identify objects in the rear side, such as vehicle & other threats. With the help of this device they feel what is nearby them. This is a low cost product and it was made as a wearable belt, which is easy to use. The Vehicle Notifier is a micro controller base system with Bayesian classification method. This unit consists of distance measuring sensors and sound detecting sensor. The notification method of this system consists of vibrating motors with easy to identify vibrating variations.

OUSL Student Wins the Manamperi Award 2014 for the Best Inter-University Final Year Undergraduate Projects in Engineering

Title of the Project : Automated Rubber Tapping Machine (Latex Tapper)
Project Supervisor : Mr. D.N. Balasuriya
Mr. Y. A. I. Yatawara, a student of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Y. A. I. Yatawara, a student of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, won the prestigious Manamperi Award 2014 for the Best Inter-University Final Year Undergraduate Project in Engineering at a colourful ceremony recently held at the BMICH. This is an accolade given annually, for the inter-university best undergraduate project, by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS). This is the 1st time an OUSL student won this award. He overcame serious competition from several other universities to win the award. Anusha received the award from the Minister of Science, Technology, and Research, Susil Premajayantha.

The project, titled 'Automated Rubber Tapping Machine (Latex Tapper)', was completed as a part of Anusha’s B. Tech final year project at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and was supervised by Senior Lecturer Mr. Nuwan Balasuriya. The project was partially funded by a grant from the ERU research fund. The project is to develop a fully-automated rubber-tapper machine that can move from tree to tree and tap rubber. This is the 1rst stage of a two-stage project. Under this stage, an automated rubber tapper was developed that can automatically tap a single rubber tree. During the next stage, a mechanism will be developed to move the tapper from tree to tree. It also has the capability to detect aspects such as the thickness of the cut and the trajectory of the cut, and place the new cut accordingly. This machine can also remove and collect clogged latex, commonly known as ottapalu. This could be the first fully-automated rubber tapper in the world. In Sri Lanka, and also in other countries like Thailand and South India, there is a severe shortage of labour for rubber tapping and most of the rubber estates remain untapped. This will be a timely solution for this issue.