Intel Invent 50 Grand Finals: And the winner of S$10,000 is...

Kickstarting innovation

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Intel’s Invent 50 competition was launched to commemorate Singapore’s Golden Jubilee and the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. Students from tertiary institutions – both polytechnics and universities – were encouraged to submit ideas on how they could devise technological solutions to today’s problems.

Some of the focus areas included Smart Nation, Smart Home, Smart Mobility, and Smart Health, encompassing a variety of issues ranging from overcrowded public transport to elderly care.

First announced in early August and supported by the Ministry of Education, Invent 50 garnered an exceedingly enthusiastic response from students, with over 150 entrants in total. But when we covered Intel’s two-day boot camp back in September, that number had been whittled down to just the top 18 teams.

The aim of the boot camp was to provide participants with the guidance and inspiration they needed to flesh out their ideas and bring them to fruition. What struck us the most at that event was not any dazzling display of engineering genius, but rather how simple – and consequently elegant – some of the solutions were. Here were a bunch of young, intrepid inventors, all of whom were highly adept at finding new and innovative uses for existing technologies, in order to devise solutions to pressing problems facing society today.

All that preparation and hard work has been leading up to the moment of the grand finals, where the teams would get to present working prototypes of their products to the judges. The judging panel comprised leaders and experts from both industry and government, including Mike Holt, the Vice-President of the Singapore Semiconductor Industry Association (SSIA), William Hooi, the Founding Executive Director of SG Makers Association, and Khoong Hock Yun, Assistant Chief Executive at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).

The Heliconia Ballroom at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre was a hive of activity on the morning of 5 December, as the teams scurried about to prepare for the judging that would begin at 9.30am. What’s at stake, you ask? Well, just a S$10,000 cash prize, a laptop with an Intel RealSense 3D camera for all members, and an internship at Intel for the winning team. Not too shabby at all!

We took a tour of the exhibition floor to speak to the teams and find out more about their projects, and also to get a closer look at their prototypes. Compared with the early conceptualizations that we saw back at the boot camp, the various projects had matured a whole lot and were literally raring to go. One of the teams even set up a booth enclosed with netting to fly their drone!

On the following page, we captured some of the highlights that caught our eye that day, so read on to see what interesting inventions were vying for the grand prize.

(Phhsst, we’ve saved the winner for the last!)

Real-time demographic data

What if it were possible for shop owners to learn more about the type of customer that their products appealed to? Team SUTD Pandas proposed to address this using Intel’s RealSense 3D camera and Microsoft’s Project Oxford, a cloud-based solution that supports face detection algorithms that are capable of detecting the age, gender and even emotions of people.

The demonstration we saw couldn’t account for emotion yet, but the team told us that it would eventually be possible given enough time. In a Microsoft blog post, the company said that Project Oxford could recognize eight core emotional states, namely, anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, neutral, sadness, and surprise. The possible uses for this technology are quite enticing. In addition to use in retail stores, it could conceivably come in handy in gauging the response to things like art exhibitions, public shows, and other places of interest.

Furthermore, the ability to detect the age and emotional response of the public could help businesses or organizers tailor their offerings to appeal to the desired demographic.

Robocops (sort of)

We already rely plenty on security cameras and other methods of electronic surveillance to keep various facilities and premises secure, so why not take that a step further? Team Sinapse Sense Swarm wants to address the shortage of security guards in Singapore with fleets of low-cost, human-friendly robots or drones.

These robots would also target other problems facing the hiring of human security personnel, like the high cost of training. The prototype we saw comprised of a mix of affordable parts, like a S$230 MinnowBoard MAX, S$100 Intel Edison board, S$140 Intel RealSense 3D camera, and a S$48 ultrasonic sensor. The idea was for these semi-autonomous robots to be able to surveil and collect data in the stead of humans, and the team believes that they could come in useful at locales as varied as private school campuses, shopping malls, and airports.

The team said that these robot surveillance systems could cost as little as S$5 an hour for monitoring purposes. Despite its futuristic sounding name, Machine-as-a-Service doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive.

Transport for the disabled

Most of us don’t think twice when flagging down and boarding a bus, but that’s something that the elderly and handicapped aren’t always able to do so easily. As a result, Team Stitches has devised “Bus Lai Liao”, a solution with a name that rolls easily off the tongue and which wants to make public transport even more accessible to those with mobility difficulties.

It works by tapping customized EZ-Link cards against a special device to be installed at bus stops. Why don’t they just use an app? That’s because they hope to cater to the blind as well, by including Braille characters alongside the bus numbers.

Passengers can then select the bus number that they wish to take, which will then alert the bus driver that there is someone with special needs waiting for them at the next stop.

Making energy conservation fun

As their name suggests, team Green is out to promote awareness of environmental issues. They intend to do this with gamified smart homes and bring about changes in energy consumption habits via modern tools like social media that will resonate with today’s youth.

Their gamified platform uses a one-touch intelligent setup method that can detect when a device is connected. It also sends data to the cloud, which is able to identify the type of device via its unique power draw. Users are then able to share their setup with their friends through a mobile strategy game app and compete against each other to see who is using the least power, thus introducing an element of fun in an endeavor traditionally thought of as quite a chore.

An amphibious drone

Team Hydrone created a drone prototype that could take to the air and land on water. The aim was to create a water-monitoring drone that would be able to sample the water and provide real-time feedback on its quality. It would be as at home in water as in the air, capable of being submerged fully without being damaged. The drone could be used to help streamline maritime operations and be involved in operations like collecting water samples, detecting chemicals in water, and monitoring oil spills.

In the case that multiple samples are required, a fleet of drones can reportedly be controlled at the same time via the Intel Edison board and a laptop.

Onboard flight controllers rely on a built-in barometer to detect altitude by monitoring changes in atmospheric pressure, in combination with a camera and laser. 

Stopping falls in people with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is associated with a loss of coordination, involuntary jerking, and a general deterioration of balance and stability. As a result, patients are often subject to falls, and because the disease occurs predominantly in the elderly, the trauma of a fall can be even more debilitating.

Team PD Loggers devised a solution comprising three sensors – one on each leg and one worn on the back of the neck – that can detect when a patient might be about to fall. This serves to give the patient some heads-up on the possible fall, and they or their caregivers can then take the necessary preventive action, perhaps by searching out a support or rest place.

The sensors have built-in gyroscopes that are able to detect the short, jerky movements that precede a “freezing” episode for PD patients, which often result in a loss of balance and falls. This translates into a series of short, irregular spikes on a graph, and this and other movement data is logged and can be easily viewed via a Web app that is accessible from any device that has an Internet connection.

This data logging also enables doctors to better tailor treatment and medication for individual patients because they are now able to observe data on the patient’s condition outside of the usual clinical time window of a regular consultation.

So who has the best idea?

Finally, it was time for the prize presentation and the big announcement. The past few months of preparation and hard work had all been leading up to this moment, so it was no surprise that the excitement in the hall was clearly palpable.

As it turned out, the winner was none other than PD Loggers, a three-man team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) who had impressed the judges with their wearable device that makes living with and treating Parkinson’s slightly easier. Comprised of Daniel Lee, Teo Yew Shen, and Val Mikos, the team will receive a S$10,000 check, a laptop with an Intel RealSense 3D camera each, and an internship with Intel.

The teams were judged on criteria like the social impact of the product, its commercial viability, how well-thought out the product was, and whether it had room for growth. Additional bonus points were also give if the judges thought that something was especially interesting.

So while PD Loggers might not have the most eye-catching prototype – it was going up against flying drones and autonomous robots – it won because of its tangible social benefit and viability. In a way, the fact that it wasn’t trying to devise some technological marvel might even have given it a leg up over some of the competition, because that meant that it could be rolled out quicker and easier. On top of that, Parkinson’s Disease afflicts three out of every thousand individuals above 50, and as Singapore’s population continues to age, medical professionals and caregivers will need to find new ways to tackle the problem. There is currently no cure for PD, so solutions to mitigate the condition are even more important.

The second prize went to Hydrone, another NUS team who had developed an amphibious drone to monitor water quality. The four-man team included Mervyn Wee, Chong Yue Linn, Marshall Chua, and Lam Nguyen, who will receive a combined check of S$5,000 and internship opportunities at Intel.

The third prize and a check of S$3,000 went to Green, a team from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) that included Krishna Kshatriya, Ishaan Gupta, and Vishwaraj Anand, which came up with the idea of using mobile gamification to motivate people to conserve energy.

A separate social media prize went to Stitches, a mixed team from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and NUS, for winning the Facebook contest and drumming up the most engagement for their posts.

What will you make?

We live in an age of high technology, and have been doing so for quite some time already. But despite the wonders and marvels of the latest inventions and the promise that the future holds, technology is ultimately a tool in our hands, and it’s up to us to decide how we want to use it.

Intel Invent 50 was all about giving the next generation of inventors the impetus and encouragement to test their ideas and put them to work. More importantly, it advanced the idea of technology as a force for social good. In a time when technology and industrial progress has alternately been lauded as changing the world for the better and demonized as bringing about ills like widening income inequalities and climate change, it is crucial that we remember that the outcome depends firmly on what we choose to do with the technological tools that have been given to us.

More than just creating a generation of people who hibernate into their devices, technology can form the foundation of solutions to solve many of society’s problems. And that’s precisely what Invent 50 is all about – sowing the seeds for the next generation to use their talents constructively.

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