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STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 4 AUGUST 2010

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By NIKI CHEONG
niki@thestar.com.my

HORRIFIC accident left Jane

paralysed and bedridden for
life. She also lost her ability to
speak, and was unable to communicate with her family and friends until a
new invention changed all that.
Using CoreInvader, a software developed by students from the Ukraine,
Jane is now able to chat with people
using just a computer and a webcam.
As Jane is unable to move her
fingers, she cannot type out messages.
Instead, she uses her eye movements
to move a cursor, select letters and
form sentences.
Jane may be a fictitious character,
but her case is not from a Hollywood
movie. The technology already exists,
and I got the chance to test it out last
month during a media showcase at the
Imagine Cup 2010, held in Warsaw,
Poland.
Each year, students from around the
world are invited to submit their ideas
and innovations based on a theme
centred around the United Nations
Millenium Development Goals (MDGs)
for the Imagine Cup. The competition,
organised by software giant Microsoft
Corp, held last month saw over 400
students from over 70 countries
(including Malaysia) come together to
compete in what has been dubbed as
the Olympics of student technology.
Throughout the course of the sixday event, students wowed the judges,
visitors and members of the media
with their astounding creations. What
was equally inspiring was the stories
they shared during their presentations
and interviews about how they came
up with their ideas.
CoreInvader was a hit at the showcase. Visitors were treated to a basic
game of Breakout (the classic arcade
game where a player hits and destroys
layers of bricks by bouncing a ball at it
using a paddle that moves horizontally).
But instead of using a joystick or the
left/right keys on the keyboard to
move the paddle, vistors were
required to control it using eye movement.
It was not easy, because one had to
make sure that only their eyes moved.
However, this experiment emphasised
the frustration a person with paralysis
probably feels and what kind of relief
or pleasure could come from having
the technology to at least help them
communicate.

my granddad has
Parkinsons Disease. His
hand shakes really badly
and he cant play the
guitar anymore and he
used to love it, so now he
can play the guitar just as
perfectly as before,
Nikola said referring to
her teams audio-visual
therapy tool.
The ImagiNote is basically a software which
allows a user to play
different instruments
using sound beam technology. It translates
movement into audiovisual feedback and has
been used by young children, some of whom have
learning disabilities as a
form of therapy and
recreation.
Frances innovation
from the Embedded
Design category was also
inspired by members of
Team GERAS grandparents.
Matthieu Perraud said
that they have grandparents who had fallen down
at home and were not
able to get help for hours.
We wanted to create a
device that would detect
when an elderly person
had had a fall and trigger
an emergency call,
another team member,
Olivier Conort explained.
They created a tilesystem, which can be
placed under carpets or
flooring boards, that
works alongside motion
detectors to detect
whether a person has
fallen down. The system
will then trigger an audio
Nikola Nevin came up with the idea for Imaginote, a game utilising sound beam technology, response to confirm that
an accident has occurred
as a way to cheer her grandfather up! Here she is demonstrating how the application
before activating an
works, by waving hands in front of the sound beam device.
emergency alert.
These few examples may not indier women and ensuring environmental
Imagine Cups theme this year was
vidually solve all of the worlds probsustainability among others.
Imagine a world where technology
lems. But the ideas presented by the
Ukraines CoreInvader addresses the
helps solve the toughest problems.
teams will have a massive impact on
goal of achieving universal primary
The students projects, in the competisome peoples lives.
education. Thanks to the students
tive and the awards categories, had to
Sometimes, it all starts by finding a
address at least one of the eight MDGs. who developed this technology, the
way to improve oneself.
severely disabled will now be able to
The eight goals, which aims to make
This was the case for David Hayden
have access to education using just
this a better world, includes eradicatfrom the United States whose project
their eyes.
ing extreme poverty and hunger,
Note-taker with teamate Andrew
The team came up with the idea
promote gender equality and empowKelley took home the first prize in the
after a friend of theirs was involved in
Touch & Tablet category.
an accident and could not communiFrances
David, who is legally blind, struggled
cate with them.
Matthieu
throughout his schooling and college
The team from Ireland also shared
Perraud from
this vision of improving peoples quali- years as he had a tough time particiTeam Geras
pating in class activities and taking
demonstrating ty of life.
down notes due to his limited
Student Nikola Nevin said her
how their
eyesight.
teams ImagiNote was inspired from
system, which
Low vision students have to use
provides a way her desire to help her grandfather play
assisted technology to take notes in
the guitar. He has Parkinsons disease,
to detect if an
class. When I was taking my computer
and has lost the ability to hold and
elderly person
science degree a few years ago, I
strum a guitar.
has fallen and
If you cant pick up the guitar say, decided to add a math major. And in
in need of
senior level math courses, the notetakbecause youve lost a limb you can
emergency
still play it using this. That was basical- ing was cosiderably faster than I was
help, works at
used to and I couldnt keep up with
ly the motivation for this project (as)
the finals of

the Imagine
Cup 2010.

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Malaysian innovators
David Hayden
created NoteTaker to help
him through
university.
note taking. I tried assisted technology and found that none were
adequate for my needs so I decided to design my own, David
explained.
His system requires the use of
a camera system that is connected to a Tablet device. When in
operation, half of the screen will
display a live video of what the
camera was capturing such as a
lecturer writing notes on a whiteboard in class while the bottom
half allows a user to jot down
handwritten notes.
David also spoke about some
assisted-technology he had previously tried such as headmounted
monoculars, which causes social
awkwarness.
If Im wearing a mask, everyone is going to think its Darth
Vader talking and that is going to
discourage the student from
interacting in class, he
explained. Note-Taker will also
solve this issue.
Many of the ideas these
students came up with at the
Imagine Cup were amazing.
The competition captains
made up of academics and
industry leaders for each
category constantly reminded

participants, visitors and the

media throughout the six-day
event that many of the students
projects are their first innovations and may be far from
perfect.
However, during their presentations (which required participants to also explain how they
intend to market or package their
products), some teams shared
that their ideas have already been
attracted the interest of governments, non-profit organisations
and commercial businesses. Some
have already been implemented.
In his address during the opening ceremony of the Imagine Cup,
Microsoft Corporation Education
Group General Manager Jon
Perera said: We believe that
technology can, will, and must
make an impact on the biggest
problems in the world. A lot of
people will see great challenges
and say, Yeah, thats a problem.
We look at you as people who
take action and say, I can do
something about that.
Indeed, while many of us
dream about making the world a
better place, some of these young
people are already making a
difference.

OVER 400 students participated in the grand

finals of The Imagine Cup 2010, including
two Malaysian teams who did the country
proud.
Another Malaysian team, Team Hypo from
Tunku Abdul Rahman College (TARC), had
already placed third in the Windows Phone 7
Rockstar Award, a pre-event category. Their
project, Butchers Survival Diary, is a 2D minigame which challenges a players hand-eye
coordination on the mobile device.
In Warsaw, Poland, where the Imagine Cup
was held last month, Universiti Sains Malaysias
Team TEC4Life made it to the final round of the
Envision 2020 Award category that challenged
students to express their vision for how
technology will transform our lives by the year
2020.
TEC4Lifes video, the format in which the ideas
must be presented, envisioned a world where
humans, animals and plants build a more intimate relationship and foster interaction to maintain sustainability on earth.
The most successful Malaysian team, however
is Team HDC from The Asia Pacific University
College of Technology and Innovation Malaysia
(UCTI). Made up of Keith Khoo, Lee Chong Yang
and Choong Yen Yen, the team proved to be one
of the favourites at the competition after it blew
the judges away at the preliminary round with
its Project Apple.
Project Apple is a software that allows users to
plan their meals at home, while promoting good
eating habits and preventing food wastage.
(Team HDC) created an exceptionally impressive user interface and the presentation was very
smooth, very sleek. I think there is a great potential for this solution to be used by real people,
said Sergei Golubev from Very Software in
Britain, one of the judges of the software design
category.
Software design is the primary category of the
event, and the winner takes home US$25,000
and the Imagine Cup.
Chuck Lawton, from renowned magazine
Wireds Geekdad column, blogged about Project
apple:

Team HDC is made up of (from left) Lee Chong

Yang, Keith Khoo and Choong Yen Yen.
The application was the slickest of all six
(finalist), leveraging all of the latest tech
Microsoft is offering, he wrote.
Team HDCs Keith said that the team is not
disheartened even though they didnt win.
Although we didnt make it, we have learned
to improve ourselves and maybe come back next
year and win the championship, he said.
As for Project Apple, the team is still going
ahead with plans to market it.
Were going to go back and meet more people
and then we hope to deploy our application by
the end of this year, Keith shared.
Although Team HDC did not win, it was the
first Malaysian team to make it to the finals of
the software category in Imagine Cup history.
Malaysia has been participating in the Imagine
Cup since it was incepted in 2003. By Niki
Cheong