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Innovative, futuristic approach to a very traditional activity
The festive atmosphere at the Hub's recent end-of-year function was made even more exciting with a real-time demonstration of a futuristic appliance that belongs to the automated e-home of the future - an Internet-driven braai!
Seen here actively involved in the demonstration of the actual braai unit in action at the Hub's year-end function are [ltr] Prof Roelf van den Heever of Epi-Use [Pty] Ltd and ITCL team members Emil Saayman, Patrick Hickey, Thabo Matshi, Lillian (Yun) Li and Robert Ellis, enthusiastically supported by Hub CEO Dr Neville Comins. |
Innovation certainly knew no boundaries when the students in the ITCoachLab at the Hub built an automated driven braai on the OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) framework for Internet-based services.
The 2003 IT CoachLab (ITCL) team, consisting of graduate ICT students from UP, is the third group to participate in the Hub's CoachLab mentorship program.
During 2003, students built on the foundations laid during the previous years. In the first semester, for example, they specifically focused on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprize Edition) technologies to integrate enterprise management systems. These skills were used during the second semester to demonstrate how Java technology, specifically, and J2EE, could effectively be used in modern Internet-based services, such as the home of the future, car automation, factory automation and building management.
As their demonstration project, ITCL members built their automated braai appliance for use in an automated e-home of the future. The OSGi framework allows devices in the home (car, factory, building, etc) to be connected to a server and to be controlled by external service providers. In the case of the automated braai, a service provider provides recipes via the Internet to the OSGi server in the home, which controls the braai. The braai executes a recipe in order to control the cooking process, delivering a perfect meal each and every time. Prosyst, a German software company, supplied the ITCL team with a copy of their high quality, commercial grade software for development of OSGi-based systems.
The culmination of this year's hard work for the students was the demonstration of the actual braai unit in action at the Hub's year-end function, where disbelieving guests became quick converts when they sampled the "perfect meal" delivered by the "intelligent" braai. Well done to the ITCL team!
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This month's highlights
