As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We of­fer this me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak, where our sci­en­tists, three of whom were re­cent­ly award­ed the high­est award of the na­tion—the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will present some of their work.

This week, we hear from Prof San­jay Ba­hadoors­ingh, who dis­cuss­es the work of the De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing, Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing, on pro­grammes such as the Sand­box ini­tia­tive, Ed­u­ca­tion­al Ro­bot­ics Kit, and a sys­tem to as­sist lo­cal artists with In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty.

Ba­hadoors­ingh is a pro­fes­sor of Pow­er Sys­tems and Sus­tain­able En­er­gy and the Head of the De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing at The UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

—Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, prin­ci­pal, UWISTA

Since Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell made the first tele­phone call in 1876, voice, video and da­ta com­mu­ni­ca­tions over the In­ter­net have be­come com­mon­place. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween peo­ple and things is in­creas­ing­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed wire­less­ly over ra­dio fre­quen­cy (RF) con­nec­tions.

The de­mand for wire­less In­ter­net-con­nect­ed de­vices (whether for long-range com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as LTE and 5G or short-range, for ex­am­ple, Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth) has been met by de­vice man­u­fac­tur­ers us­ing sin­gle-chip RF trans­ceivers, in­te­grat­ed cir­cuits that con­vert dig­i­tal da­ta to pro­to­col-com­pli­ant RF sig­nals. The easy ac­cess to and af­ford­abil­i­ty of these trans­ceivers and oth­er com­po­nents has vir­tu­al­ly de­moc­ra­tised the de­vel­op­ment of elec­tron­ic prod­ucts.

The op­por­tu­ni­ties for wire­less prod­uct in­no­va­tion are sig­nif­i­cant to mi­croen­ter­pris­es that do not have the deep pock­ets of tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in small is­land de­vel­op­ing states that do not en­joy the economies of scale of mas­sive lo­cal mar­kets. At the same time, in­no­va­tion is wide­ly un­der­stood to be key to both so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. It is a high pri­or­i­ty for gov­ern­ments world­wide, in­clud­ing here at home.

Wire­less prod­uct in­no­va­tion re­quires the trans­mis­sion of RF ra­di­a­tion in the ear­ly stages of de­vel­op­ment and test­ing. How­ev­er, na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions on­ly al­low RF trans­mis­sion from equip­ment that has been cer­ti­fied to as­sure no harm to hu­man health and no harm­ful in­ter­fer­ence to oth­er le­git­i­mate RF users. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion presents a bar­ri­er to wire­less pro­to­typ­ing since it is time-con­sum­ing and ex­pen­sive, par­tic­u­lar­ly as there are no lo­cal ac­cred­it­ed lab­o­ra­to­ries.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies is break­ing bar­ri­ers, as it re­cent­ly signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), which al­lows the use of pro­to­type wire­less de­vices for a lim­it­ed time, un­der spe­cif­ic con­di­tions. This Sand­box is a con­tem­po­rary reg­u­la­to­ry tool that re­lax­es bar­ri­ers to in­no­va­tion while main­tain­ing ap­pro­pri­ate over­sight for the pub­lic good.

In ad­di­tion to the tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of lo­cal­ly-de­vel­oped prod­ucts, the Sand­box is an im­por­tant plat­form for na­tion-build­ing through ini­tia­tives that strength­en our Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics (STEM) iden­ti­ty, lever­age in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) rights of our artists, in­crease the ben­e­fits of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT), and more. The UWI’s De­part­ment of Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing (DECE) is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in sev­er­al rel­e­vant and re­lat­ed ini­tia­tives.

Re­search shows that STEM Iden­ti­ty, which is one’s self-per­cep­tion of STEM abil­i­ty and com­pe­tence, im­pacts de­ci­sions to pur­sue STEM ca­reers. It is im­por­tant, then, to strength­en this iden­ti­ty in our chil­dren, re­gard­less of their so­cial and eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances, to meet fu­ture na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment goals that call for a ro­bust STEM-en­abled work­force.

In­equitable ac­cess to, and low avail­abil­i­ty of, hands-on STEM learn­ing re­sources are among the pre­vail­ing chal­lenges that mo­ti­vat­ed the de­sign of an Ed­u­ca­tion­al Ro­bot­ics Kit (ERK) by vol­un­teers and re­searchers at DECE. Like oth­er ERKs, the kit pro­vides rich op­por­tu­ni­ties for learn­ers to con­fig­ure, pro­gramme and con­trol ro­bots’ me­chan­i­cal struc­tures, typ­i­cal­ly via a wire­less link, and en­gage in a pletho­ra of cap­ti­vat­ing, hands-on and crit­i­cal think­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, in­di­vid­u­al­ly and in groups. The kit is min­i­mal in na­ture, util­is­ing a lo­cal­ly sourced struc­ture and open-source com­po­nents. It can be built by mul­ti­ple man­u­fac­tur­ers and flex­i­bly main­tained by STEM ac­tiv­i­ty or­gan­is­ers.  

DECE will use the Sand­box for sev­er­al fit-for-pur­pose ex­am­i­na­tions on the ERK, in­clud­ing RF ex­po­sures of sin­gle and mul­ti­ple de­vices to chil­dren and re­source ef­fi­cien­cy stud­ies.

Lo­cal mu­sic gen­er­ates sig­nif­i­cant IP, for which roy­al­ties are of­ten un­col­lect­ed since da­ta on the fre­quen­cies of play is of­ten re­quired, among oth­er things. A re­mote sys­tem has been de­signed lo­cal­ly to en­able artists, pro­duc­ers and con­tent own­ers to col­lect da­ta on when, where and how of­ten pieces are played. It can be in­stalled at event venues of any size and lo­ca­tion, fixed or mo­bile. Among oth­er things, the sys­tem com­pris­es wire­less com­po­nents, in­clud­ing a cel­lu­lar mod­ule. The Sand­box will be used, in part­ner­ship with DECE, to test the pro­to­type to en­sure com­pli­ant op­er­a­tions.

DECE works in many oth­er ap­pli­ca­tion spaces that could seed col­lab­o­ra­tion on Sand­box ini­tia­tives. These in­clude the ap­pli­ca­tion of ICT to sec­tors in­clud­ing fish­eries and agri­cul­ture. In Sep­tem­ber, the Min­istry of In­for­mat­ics in In­done­sia asked to vis­it DECE for as­sis­tance re­lat­ed to chal­lenges faced by their small-scale fish­er­folk. At the same time, sev­er­al lo­cal en­ti­ties have ex­pressed in­ter­est in RF-en­abled agri­cul­tur­al de­vices de­vel­oped by DECE.

• Those in­ter­est­ed in part­ner­ing on sand­box ini­tia­tives are in­vit­ed to con­tact DECE at STA-Head.DECE@sta.uwi.edu

• Those in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing or de­ploy­ing pro­to­type RF de­vices are in­vit­ed to con­tact TATT at cr­dowens@tatt.org.tt