650 creative products appeared at the fourth "Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreneurship." exhibition. Some were fantastic thoughts, which surprised everyone. In fact, many of these products have won big prizes in major events at home and abroad. Now put together in one of WHU’s exhibition areas, they offered us a scientific feast. The visitors were amazed by those products and could not help to praise.
Curiosity is the best tutor
Using automatic control technology and sensor technology to ensure accurate trajectory positioning, even with a barrier on its runway, an intelligent vehicle can run rapidly and reliably. With amazing speed and careful design, our school representatives won 3 first prizes in the Ninth National University Intelligent Vehicle Competition, keeping the record in history.
In the National College Students Structural Design Competition, which is considered "the Olympic Games" in the field of civil engineering, "Bamboo Stilts" of WHU, a model which demonstrates how to bear a burden of 79 kg by using amazingly, only 50 g of bamboo, won the only special award in the seventh session with 10 points ahead of the second prize. And this was the first grand prize our university has ever won in this competition.
Without any auxiliary equipment, we can acquire stereoscopic images with a great sense of depth and space. The new technology called "3D with naked eyes" makes the 3D technology become more user-friendly. The team named "Li Gan Jian Ying "(Innovation Based on Feelings), dedicating to the research and development of stereoscopic photography, showcased a 3D display so easy to use that it received the nickname “with naked eyes”. It granted stereoscopic images and other technologies the title of "Xiaoping science and technology innovation team" and gained great scores in the National University Student Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Work Competition of "Challenge Cup".
With an indicator on your head, you can see the scenery of each angle in the distance only by turning your head. Once, Yinbo Xie, the instructor of the School of Electronics and Information’s innovation team, suggested an idea of capturing head posture control actuator by infrared sensor. One of his team members, the 2011 undergraduates Zhe Wang read an article about Oculus RIFT, and put forward the idea of completing this task by wearing a display on his head. Thus, EYES - visual walkthrough system came into being.
Gao Zhou, a student of the College of Life Science, paid much attention to the plants on Luo Jia Moutain. During the 5 years in WHU, he had "visited" the sites of each kind of plant, and organized a summer social practice team called Treasure Hunt in LuoJia to make a census of the medicinal plants found there. He selected 120 kinds of plants to make a compilation, took pictures of each kind and illustrated them in detail. "Through 5 years of constant observation, I can easily identify all the plants on Luo Jia Mountain." Gao Zhou told the reporter confidently.
It is not that difficult
Weight-loss meal with low calorie, beauty packages rich in vitamin C, haze package protecting your lungs...... Lots of fresh fruits make us dizzy. The team "Princess Guo" battled the lack of money problem in the initial stage. "The loss would have been very serious if the fruits had not sold out." Therefore, the team members made a research on the big markets, and then adjusted the variety and quantity of the fruits they need. Thus, fruit packages designed for different consumer groups came into being.
In addition to the fruit packaging for different functions, the team also introduced different products according to the change of the seasons. "Juice in summer, nuts in winter, everything is possible if you can think about it." After the optimization and the upgrading, Princess Guo’s business goes well on its way. Now dressed in a uniform featuring a "fruit" on the back of the shirt, the members of this youthful team, ride their electro motors in the campus and have well become part of the scenery.
"1 cubic meters of material can absorb 220 kilograms of carbon dioxide", the negative carbon environmental protection magnetite - sawdust composite materials attracted a lot of attention at the exhibition. In the production process, the team encountered a big problem: new materials of low hardness and poor water resistance, could not meet the application requirements entirely.
Team members boldly suspected the allocation ratio of various materials recorded in books. After repeated experiments, they found out they could make materials of moderate hardness by using the sawdust and magnetite according to the proportion 1:4 to 1:5, not the 1:3 found in the books; and the addition of phosphate series admixture ratio which recorded for 2%-6% in the books, was reduced to 0.5%-2%.
"Maybe it is the material purity that leads to the difference. But this lets us understand that one should dare to persist in rational analysis and ponder things on their own. Genuine knowledge comes from experimenting with things!" The team members said with a smile.
The pressing time and the heavy task were problems that almost every innovation team faced. "Robot team", in order to finalize every step of the job, catch up with the production cycle, etc saw the processing group doing overnight work on CNC machining parts after the designing group finished the design assignment. Later the two groups assembled the spare parts together, and then handed the product over to the control group, who was in charge of the debugging. "As long as there is no class, everyone does designing work in the laboratory, and debugs the equipment. Overnight redesigning is quite usual. We encourage each other when we feel tired. We persist in our effort and difficulty is gone in a minute once the results start to show."
WHU will help you fulfill your dream
The young man is never in lack of imaginative ideas, but academic pressure, insufficient funds, limited space and other objective factors turn out to be a large stumbling block in the process of experimenting and testing new ideas. However, at Wuhan University, these things won’t bother you anymore.
As early as 2003, our school took the lead in putting forward the new educational theory of "creation, innovation, entrepreneurship”, and made this idea imprint every link of the undergraduate teaching. Besides, WHU is the pioneer to implement the credit system of providing compulsive courses, as well as optional courses, supporting double degree study and creativity. These measures thus encourage students to develop independently, and lead them into research participation and training as well as promoting innovation and entrepreneurship training.
In addition, every undergraduate class has a tutor. WHU invites well-known alumni as well as undergraduate class tutors or research-guidance teachers, establishes college students’ entrepreneurship funds, sets up a number of practice bases, and takes a series of awarding measures, so as to incent students’ participation in science and technology innovation.
Thanks to the strong support from our University, struggling with essays or GPA is no longer the only way for students to become recognized. Yao Cai, a 2011 undergraduate student of the College of Power and Mechanical Engineering, has entered tutor’s laboratory since grade two and is dedicated to scientific research. He has already earned all 21 innovation credits. Besides, he had won the second prize for machinery innovation design competition within the Hubei province and had gotten 7 national patents. He said, "College life can also be colorful without the SCI and EI thesis."
In addition to the policy support, WHU also provides great financial incentives. Annually WHU invests 3,000,000 Yuan into special funds to support the students’ discipline competition as well as innovation and entrepreneurship practice. In 2014, WHU established the 10,000,000 Yuan special funds for the innovation and entrepreneurship education of college students.
The College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Practice Center totals an area of approximately 6200 square meters. It has been officially put into use. It has 87 working rooms, 3 multimedia classrooms, 3 conference rooms, 2 exhibition halls, 2 exhibition rooms and a lecture hall which allows for the hosting of 300 people. The center can accommodate nearly 100 teams; all of the students may apply for free accommodations for their projects.
"Robot team" is one of the teams that has benefited a lot from the programme. In 2013, the team got 160,000 Yuan as a research fund from the University, so they have sufficient money to purchase raw materials, circuit boards and many other sensors. Furthermore, the team also successfully applied for 2 working rooms, one for the job training field and another, for the production designing site.
One of the team members, 2012 undergraduate Chunni Jia confidently said, "The University support is the power that encourages us to continue. We will accumulate experience and enhance technology to match the best of the best. Meanwhile, we will draw lessons and make full use of our advantages to strive for new breakthroughs.
(Rewritten by Yuqian Zhang, edited by Diana& Sijia Hu)
