2010 Past Events

2010 Past Events

The following is a list of events organised by the Auckland Local Network.  

20 October 2010: 2010 Auckland LN Present Around the World Competition

A total of 10 candidates competed at the annual competition.  The judges were impressed by the high quality of all the presentations and congratulated everyone for their efforts.  

The first prize went to Matthew Richardson of Manukau Institute of Technology for his presentation on Real-time Gait Identification on an FPGA Platform.

The second prize went to Sheena Garg of University of Auckland for her presentation on Protein Adsorption on Magnesium Implants.

Both winners will represent Auckland at the New Zealand Presentation Around the World Competition to be held in Christchurch next year. 

19 October 2010: Site visit to Stratos Teleport & Land Earth Station

This site visit was organised by the IET Auckland Young Professionals section.  The event was hosted by Eric Jones MIET (Managing Director of Stratos NZ Ltd), assisted by Ken Taylor MIET (Senior Technical Officer/Director Stratos NZ Ltd) and David Thorpe (Wright Satellite Connections Ltd).  Visitors were introduced to Stratos, saw demonstrations on current and future trends for Satellite Communications & Safety Services, including Fixed & Mobile VSAT Applications, Mobile Satellite Communications Services and Applications.

30 September 2010: IET Auckland Annual General Meeting, Dinner and Presentations

The IET Auckland AGM was held at Jubilee Hall, Parnell.  The event combined the AGM, IET Auckland Student Prize presentations, special guests presentations and dinner.  We had two guests speakers this year, Chris Chitty, presenter of ‘Let’s Get Inventing’ TV series, and Kip Cooper, winner of the 2009 IET PATW Global competition.  

Chris Chitty spoke about the lighter side of biologically inspired robots and show some of the unusual unexpected results when lifelike robots are made to mimic humans and animals for film, entertainment and medical training. 

Kip Copper's presentation focused on the research he completed to develop an innovative means of dewatering the sludges produced by mines, waste water treatment plants and paper mills.  Kip also spoke about his experiences and journey towards winning world final of the IET's Present Around the World Competition, held at Lords Pavillion London in 2009. 

16 September 2010: Control Systems for Wind Turbines by Avishek Kumar

This was a joint IET and ESR lecture.  Avishel's talk summarised wind turbine control objectives, and the latest in research to meet these control objectives, which include novel control algorithms, sensor combinations and smart actuators.

27 September 2010: Site visit to ETEL Distribution Transformers,ETEL Limited, Rosebank, Auckland

This site visit was organised by the IET Auckland Young Professionals section.  Visitors were shown the complete manufacturing process of a distribution transformer with a company that has changed the face of the distribution transformer market in NZ.

19 August 2010: Renewable Energy, Smart grid, and Electric Vehicles as they fit into an Open Source Context by Philip Court (Managing Director of Greenstage Investments) and John Gorman (founder and director of SolarNetwork)

This was a joint IET and ESR presentation.  Philip Court and John Gorman spoke about the advancement of their startup, Greenstage Power, and the advantages of open source development software and methodology applied to the emerging smart grid in New Zealand.  

2 August 2010: Sun, Surf and Automation: A Decade of Field Robotics in Australia by Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte

This was a joint IET and IEEE event.  Professor Hugh's talk described a number of technical advances in the areas of perception, large machine control, and systems engineering that have enabled significant progress in the -Yìscience¡ of field robotics and which have led to significant commercial developments especially in cargo handling, mining and marine systems.  

29 July 2010: Smart-Homes, Speech Recognition and Virtual Humans by Dr T.J.Moir, School of Engineering and Advanced Technology Massey University at Albany Auckland New Zealand

Dr. Tom Moir's seminar examined the concept of a smart-house to see what can be implemented at low-cost to conventional homes to make them smart. It showed that speech recognition to communicate with the house is by far an easier and cost-effective solution than first thought.  The problem of disturbances to the speech-recognition engine in the form of noise from TV, Radio or other occupants was explored and possible solutions sought using acoustic beamforming technology. 

22 July 2010: Auckland Rail Electrification by Murray Hood, Project Director – Electrification, ONTRACK

Murray provided an overview of the Auckland Rail Electrification project, identifying the various aspects including Planning, Environmental, Aesthetics, Signals, Traction, Power, Safety and Civil Engineering.

15 July 2010: Tidal Stream Energy: Update on developments in NZ and worldwide by Ian Milne, University of Auckland

13 July 2010: Climate change, Renewable energy and the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme by Bryan Leyland MSc, FIEE, FIMechE, FIPENZ, is an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer specialising in power generation and power systems

2 March 2010: Upgrade of the New Zealand National Grid by Wayne Brown BE FIPENZ FIDNZ, Chair Transpower

Wayne presented a background into some of Transpower's up coming large projects, why and how they will be implemented 

March 2010: 2010 Prestige Lecture Series (across New Zealand) - Transition Engineering by Susan Krumdieck, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UoC

Susan presented the fundamental framework for Transition Engineering, the art and applied science of system change.  Transition engineering is currently a discipline recognised in Computer and Software Engineering where change management for IT systems requires an engineering project in itself.