Asian Teams Dominate
Next Year’s Competition Takes Place on U.S. Soil for the First Time
eyeFeel allows the hearing-impaired to communicate with others via an augmented-reality environment. It combines speech and face recognition, converts it to English from text, and generates virtual conversation text balloons and sign-language animation in real time. Photos courtesy of Imagine Cup
A student team from Thailand won Microsoft Imagine Cup’s $25,000 grand prize in the Software Design category for its eyeFeel technology, which allows the hearing-impaired to communicate with others.
Team Skeek’s software uses speech and facial recognition systems and a text-to-sign language translator to facilitate real-time conversations with someone who is deaf.
The team said its goal was to encourage more people with hearing difficulties to enter conventional schools and universities.
“We have a dream that all students will be equal in the classroom,” said team member Pichai Sodsai. “That’s why we built eyeFeel.”
Team Skeek said it will keep working on eyeFeel to bring it to market. Currently, eyeFeel only works in English, so the team’s next step is to embed Thai-language support.
Meanwhile, the team is soaking up its win.
“This is way beyond our expectations,” Sodsai said. “We’re so happy.”
Other team members were Kirthee Siristh, Thanasunn Dilokpinitnun and Nonthawat Srichad. The team attends Thailand’s Kasetsart University.
The finals, held in Poland this year, awarded some $240,000 in cash prizes across five competition categories.
Next year’s event is in New York City, the first time the finals will be held in the United States. The Imagine Cup allows high school and university students to turn their greatest ideas into tangible solutions for helping others.
Now in its eighth year, this was the largest Imagine Cup to date, with more than 325,000 students participating across more than 100 countries and regions. Some 400 students took part in the worldwide finals.
Other winners this year include:
SmarterME provides home or office users with detailed power consumption information, including what appliances consume power and when and where consumption is greatest.
Team: SmarterME
From: Taiwan
Category: Embedded Development
Award: $25,000
Team SmarterME wants to help consumers keep an eye on power-hungry appliances. It developed its Smarter Meter project after one of its members received a sky-high electricity bill, says Yi-Sheng Lai, a student at National Chiao Tung University.
“After that, we were always trying to reduce our power consumption,” he says. “We realized having a single meter would help track a power footprint. That’s how we came up with the idea for the Smarter Meter.”
Smarter Meter provides detailed power consumption information to users. At a glance, homeowners can see what appliances are responsible for the bulk of their electricity use, which team members say will help people reduce energy use and save money.
Team SmarterME plans to continue refining its project. SmarterME is targeted to the average family, but the team plans to create a version that can monitor office buildings.
Wildfire is a game about saving the world. Opponents such as poverty, gender inequality, inadequate education and environmental degradation can be defeated through volunteerism, social interaction and nonviolent activism.
Team: By Implication
From: Philippines
Category: Game Design
Award: $25,000
For Team By Implication from the Philippines, winning the Imagine Cup’s Game Design competition is the first step in spreading a wildfire.
Wildfire is a video game about saving the world through social action and volunteerism, says Philip Cheang, a student at Ateneo de Manila University.
In the game, players take on some of the biggest enemies out there, including rampant poverty, gender inequality and environmental degradation. The message behind the game is that these scourges can be defeated.
Team members say the inspiration for Wildfire came in the wake of Typhoon Ketsana, which wreaked havoc on the Philippines in 2009. After the typhoon, Filipinos responded with a wave of volunteerism, Cheang says. The team was inspired to create a game that showed the amazing things people can do when they work together.
The team will continue to create video games that encourage social action.
“We love game design and want to pursue it seriously,” Cheang says. “I think winning it all is a good sign we’re on the right path.”
Team: Weiqiu Wen (individual)
From: China
Category: IT Challenge
Award: $8,000
“I like this competition because it’s very challenging,” says Weiqiu Wen a student at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and winner of Imagine Cup’s IT Challenge category. “I have an interest in how to come up with better solutions and design better IT systems.”
The IT Challenge calls on competitors to develop, deploy and maintain their own IT systems. This year’s competition asked participants to come up with a system that kept power consumption to a minimum.
Wen says he will continue to focus on building more efficient and robust IT systems while he finishes two more years at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Team: Mirror Vita
From: Taiwan
Category: Digital Media
Award: $8,000
Team Mirror Vita won $8,000 with their project For Kids in the Future.
Filmed and edited over a 30-hour period, the animated short video tells children that they have the power to change the world, says Ching-Cheng Su, a student at National Taipei University of Technology.
“This competition is all about solving the world’s toughest challenges,” Su says. “We think children are the ones who will solve them with their creativity and imagination. We want to tell them, ‘Don’t be afraid to use your imagination.’”
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Editor’s note: This article appears in the September 2010 print edition.
