Workplace Safety and Health

Catastrophic residential fires and wildfires have a significant impact in terms of fatalities, injuries, loss of property, and air pollution. Flame retardants play important roles in fire protection by helping to prevent or slow the spread of fire. Currently, brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are the most abundantly used flame retardants. However, there are increasing concerns about their toxicity to humans and persistence in the environment.  To find an eco-friendly alternative to those toxic chemicals, the technology owner has developed a non-toxic flame-retardant nanocoating using bio-based and renewable raw materials such as chitosan and clay nanoplatelets. This water-based coating can potentially be applied to any flammable polymeric material, such as wood, foams and fabrics, providing effective fire protection for a wide range of applications. The technology is available for IP licencing and R&D collaboration with industry partners who are interested in adopting flame-retardant coatings in their products and applications.

Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) is widely used for blast protection and structural reinforcement of concrete elements in buildings and infrastructure. However, conventional FRP solutions have limitations due to labour-intensive applications such as on-site preparation and resin mixing, inconsistent quality, long curing time, and low productivity. The technology is a glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) roll pre-saturated with a tacky resin system that can be easily applied to structural elements like “double-sided tape”. The resin-infused GFRP can fully cure in natural light within a few hours, strengthening the structure with only a marginal increase in wall thickness. A fire-retarding version of GFRP is also available. The GFRP solution is fast and efficient with minimal on-site tools and less dependent on workmanship skills. The technology is available for IP licensing and collaboration with industrial partners who are interested in adopting the fast-curing GFRP technology in their products and applications.

As the earth gets warmer, the cooling of living and working spaces requires more energy. Governments are enacting standards for eco-friendly buildings in response to increasing concerns about rising energy use and carbon emissions. A novel “self-cooling” solution can help buildings and automobiles to cool down without heavily relying on air conditioning, leading to greater energy savings. The technology offer is a high-performance passive radiative cooling paint (PRCP) using emerging nanomaterial technology. Different from conventional paint, this cooling paint combines high solar reflectivity with high thermal emissivity. Hence, the paint can reflect incoming solar radiation and emit thermal radiation simultaneously, achieving effective cooling even under direct sunlight.  The technology owner is interested in R&D collaboration and test-bedding with commercial and residential building owners, property developers and construction companies. The technology is also available for out-licensing to paint developers and manufacturers.

The technology offer presents a wireless data transmission via ultrasound system. The technology transforms any speaker or sound system into a tool for detection, geolocation, authentication and wireless communication. The system allows wireless data transmission in constrained environments where radio waves (e.g., Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth) are not effective or not permitted, such as explosive, defense, electromagnetic-sensitive, metallic and high humidity environment.

Current methods of monitoring construction safety and productivity are tedious, costly and prone to human errors. Resulting in operations being non-compliant, dangerous and inefficient which leads to project delays, cost overruns and even reputational damage. This technology offers an enhanced safety and productivity tracking solution in the construction industry by leveraging on video analytics to detect safety hazards and high-risk scenarios as well as productivity insights. It provides actionable insights in the form of alerts, charts and reports to enable safety officers and project managers to make better-informed decisions for their operations.

The Technology Offer is a computer vision system designed to enhance workspace safety through real-time detection of hazards and unsafe practices. By placing cameras at strategic locations around the worksite, and processing the video streams using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, the technology can automatically detect and alert operators of any safety breaches. The technology is also customizable for specific use-cases, safety violations, and different worksite environments.

The platform assists and empowers health care professionals, researchers and third-party developers to develop their own solutions with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven platform. The AI platform works seamlessly with the company's award-winning portable EEG headset to provide developers with the ability to analyze the brain signals of users; measuring mental states including but not limited to attention, relaxation, mental workload and fatigue.  The technology reveals numerous potential avenues to explore complementary, intervention programs for mental wellness, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children, rehabilitation programs for stroke patients, cognitive rehabilitation for seniors and other neurological issues. 

Modern buildings are often equipped with building automation and control (BAC) systems for operational control and monitoring. Conventional BAC systems lack the level of intelligence to coordinate the control of complex building systems to achieve multiple targets (energy efficiency, occupant well-being). Most conventional BAC systems have the core control algorithm in a reactive manner such as on/off control or proportional–integral–derivative (PID) control. Due to the complexity of most modern buildings and their ACMV systems, reactive control can practically never achieve the desired control target based on the past measurement information. In addition, reactive control is typical for single-input systems (e.g., room temperature as a single input for ACMV system) but rarely capable of coordinating multiple systems. These limitations in the current reactive BAC systems could lead to low energy efficiency and unsatisfactory human comfort. The proposed technology offers a model predictive control (MPC) solution that overcomes such limitations by employing a building model to perform optimal, predictive and coordinated control of various building service systems including air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV – FCU, VAV, ACB, PDV, etc), lighting (automated dimming) and shading (automated blinds and electrochromic windows), etc. The technology was test bedded in multiple buildings, achieving 20 – 60% of energy savings while greatly improving occupants’ thermal and visual comfort. This could largely disrupt the BAC market to shift to a much more intelligent level with predictive (instead of reactive) control and real-time optimization. A MPC system that is suitable for commercial deployment is now being developed. The technology provider is seeking for industry partners to collaborate through various modes including technology licensing, research project and test bedding in buildings.

Core body temperature is an important vital sign indicating the health status of a person. This technology offer is a wearable core body temperature sensor for continuous and non-invasive measurements. The miniaturized sensor is ideal for the integration into wearable devices and med-tech/health-tech devices with skin contact. Both stand-alone solution and integrated circuit (IC) level solutions are available.