The culmination of three years of innovation was presented during the half-day event - attended by fellow students, staff and businesses - with everything from video games to robotic arms and even aerial drones on display.

One such project was Sakib Maad Sheikh’s robot arm, entirely 3D printed at the University and capable of replicating human hand gestures. Despite knowing very little about coding before joining the University’s Artificial Intelligence and Robotics course, his project is setting him up for a career in prosthetics.

“It [the robot arm] can be used for prosthetics or even for controlling large scale industrial robots,” he said. “Prosthetics would be the ideal area I want to move into.

“I would like to make it fully wireless. I believe I can use an Android phone that can be kept in someone’s pocket, instead of using a laptop.”

Another project with the potential to impact positively on health and wellbeing was that by Jack Ball. A Computer Games Development student, Jack sought to uncover the dangers of virtual reality by designing a horror game capable of testing players’ cardiac response.

“Virtual reality is an emerging technology and that’s where games are going now,” said Jack. “So I thought ‘what are the risks of being in virtual reality?’

“When I first started the project there wasn’t really a lot of information about the dangers of it, especially in terms of heart rate.”

Results showed that heart rates vastly increase when games are played in virtual reality as opposed to without VR hardware, a statistic that Jack warns could be very dangerous.

“The results showed that the heart rate is higher by, on average, 20 beats per minute when the game is played in virtual reality.

“If heart rate increases so much, especially for people with heart problems, it could be really dangerous.”

The safety of children online was clearly a concern for Computer Networking student Conor Grant, whose system for safeguarding young people online while allowing parents to continue using the internet unrestricted was influenced by a member of his family.

He said: “The whole idea came from a family member in need of a product like this. They needed a method where they could do their work but their children would still have internet access.

“There are technologies out there that do similar things to this but they require the whole network being restricted.

“It has a user interface where you can change what type of categories you want your children to access, you can block specific URLs, you can pick times for it to turn off and on.”

Conor applied the skills learnt on a number of course units to his device, another example of how the Department of Computer Science and Technology is teaching students how to use their education to make impactful changes to society and healthcare.

A hive of activity, the event was also open to prospective employers, who presented awards for particularly outstanding projects.

Professor Amar Aggoun, the Head of Department, commented on the success of the day:

“This event is a wonderful way of showing appreciation of our students’ outstanding effort and contribution to the department.

“I have seen a great level of innovation and our industry partners attended today have all agreed that the level of work is impressive.”