Applied Research
Applied research at Polytechnics Mauritius is a humble attempt to create a stir in students to stretch their interest, curiosity and sense of experimentation and adventure. In this journey, our research and analytics cell and academic faculty will act as facilitators, motivators and mentors to push the boundaries and put students in touch with industry stakeholders. This manifests in a platform to address industry’s unresolved issues or problems that need look into and that until now, had been put on the backburner pending more resources. Thus, students align their interest to real-world problems that needs more than an easy fix and deserves a closer and deeper gauge.
In short, Polytechnics Mauritius students and faculty work in collaboration with local community and social partners linking academic and skills endeavours to solve community problems. Faculty also take a lead role to work directly with industry to bring solutions and generate impact. The research, while mainly focused on practical issues, can adopt a number of different forms based on the nature of the issue at hand.
From stakeholder meetings to impact surveys, from action-based workshops to one-on-one discussions or research forums, the start is not pre-scripted but evolves organically based on needs and demands.
Using IoT technologies to transform the construction industry creates pathways to higher productivity, quality, and safety in the construction processes together with lower environmental impact, and to increased sustainability, fitness-for-use and resilience in the resulting infrastructure. While notable gains are being made possible by the full deployment of IoT, in the longer term it is data-driven techniques and models based on AI and its subsets (machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision) that will deliver lasting value in the construction industry. It is desirable to improve construction processes and save time on menial or time-consuming tasks in addition to reducing the physical workload on the construction site through automation and mass customization thereby removing barriers to cost reduction in the industry. This project was submitted jointly by Pro-Design and Polytechnics Mauritius and is still under evaluation at MRIC.
This project is about an IoT Hydroponic System where the plants will be fed with its nutrients and water automatically with Arduino and some sensors. During this recent COVID-19 pandemic, planters were not able to harvest or monitor their crops. Moreover, as a tropical island where flash floods and torrential rains are common, lecturers and students are joining hands to resolve the problems. Hydroponic growing need to be controlled. As an indoor growing method, it requires fine management of environmental factors such as heat and humidity. This soilless style of growing depends on careful control of nutrient dosing and water flow. This project seeks to address several challenges: usage of land, food shortage, prevention of crop damage during natural disasters, efficient harvesting time and brought together Paul Pierre Adrien, Dussoye Rishab, Abdoolrahaman Djawaad of the IoT cohort.