May 6, 2024, Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Research, Innovation, and a novel business model, ingredients that are rare to be in one single undergraduate-level project.
A group of 4th year engineering students at Canadian University Dubai won at the 15th Annual Undergraduate Research Conference and Applied Computing for their project titled “An Agile Food Pick-Up System Using Optimized Priority Queues” and mentored by Dr. Said Elnaffar in the Computer Science Department.
“Have you ever been stuck in the traffic jam of Dubai, craving some pizza from your favorite restaurant that you wish to pick up on your way home?”, explain the team members (Helia Haghighi, Sara Alameri, Ibrahim Alhamoud). Our project allows you to place your order from your favorite restaurant and it will take care of ensuring that your pick-up meal is ready near your arrival time so that you get it fresh. The project aims at optimizing the food preparation time by tracking the conditions of the traffic, and the load of orders at the other end of the restaurant. The system strives to minimize the waiting time of the client, having fresh meals, and at the same time maximizing the productivity of the restaurant as it shuffles the food orders based on real-time information.
The winning team highlighted that experts from the market showed interest in our system and they perceive it as a new business model that can compete with the delivery-based systems and make it a win-win for both the clients and the restaurants especially that the overhead cost associated with the delivery logistics is eliminated.
It is worth mentioning that an early version of the software has been implemented and that the project won several other awards earlier this year.
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