HKUST Path Advisor Version 1.0
An earlier version of HKUST Path Advisor (HKUST Path Advisor Version 1.0) was first developed by a final year project, involving 4 students (LIU, Hung Ho (Henry) (leader), CHOW, Kwan Wang, NG, Wai Ying, and SO, Siu Wing), under the supervision of Prof. Raymond WONG from the department of Computer Science and Engineering in the academic year of 2009-2010. The project was firstly proposed by Prof. Raymond WONG since he thought that a UST map-assisted system could help users to find locations more easily within the campus.
Due to its usefulness of this system, Prof. WONG approached ITSC for the possibility of launching this system in the campus and ITSC agreed to launch this system officially in the whole campus in 2010. After it was launched, UST Path Advisor is kept to be the top popular system/application in our campus.
After that, more features were added to UST Path Advisor. One representative feature is the seating plan of each classroom, providing detailed facility information and classroom photos, which could help UST users to plan ahead for any events in the classrooms. This feature was done by Prof. WONG's final year project, involving 4 members (CHAN, Kai Shing, CHAN, Tsz Him Hiram, CHEUK, Kin Shing, and CHEUNG, Po Yi), in the academic year 2010-2011.
HKUST Path Advisor Version 2.0
After several years of the launch of UST Path Advisor Version 1.0, ITSC (Samuel KWAN and Michael TANG) and Prof. WONG planned to launch HKUST Path Advisor Version 2.0 in 2019. The development of Version 2.0 was done by our UST alumni who was one of the main contributors of Version 1.0 called LIU, Hung Ho (Henry). The new functions of Version 2.0 are the "plug-and-play" functions which could not be found in Version 1.0. Specifically, the plug-and-play functions in Version 2.0 are to allow new developers/programmers/students to add different features to Version 2.0 in an easy manner without modifying the original system a lot. These functions are very important to provide many opportunities to UST students and alumni to enhance the HKUST Path Advisor in different aspects and directions for a healthy growth of the system.
Up to now, there are different parties who participated into this enhancement scheme by introducing their own new features via the "plug-and-play" functions in HKUST Path Advisor Version 2.0. Some new features are "Bus Queue Statistics" (where the statistics come from Prof. Gary CHAN's team (including his staff called LIN, Zhongming) and the integration was done by one ITSC intern student called KONG, Ming Hin (Nathan)) and "3D View" (where the 3D model comes from Prof. Jack CHENG's team (including his postdoc called CHEN, Keyu (Kevin)) and the visualization was done by Prof. Raymond WONG's team (including his PhD students called LIU, Hao and YAN, Yinzhao)).
Recently, the mobile app versions (iOS and Android) of HKUST Path Advisor have been launched. These were developed by our own students, including Prof. WONG's final year project students (CHENG, Siu Fung (Hugo), CHEUNG, Kwan Yeung (Ernest), LAU, Cheuk Yin (Alpha) and OR, Ka Long (Sam)) and ITSC's internship students (HUI, Yun Fung (Daniel) and FENG, Zihan), with the help of ITSC (Samuel KWAN and Michael TANG), Raymond and Henry LIU. In the near future, this mobile app version will incorporate the new technology developed by Gary CHAN’s team, including LAI, Ki Kit, HU, Siyan and LEUNG, Nelson, about indoor localization for better user experience.