KUCHING – Undergraduate students from Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak made their university proud when they swept several top awards and prizes in the recently concluded Innovate Malaysia Design Competition (IMDC) held in Penang.
The multi-discipline engineering design competition was organised by multinational companies Altera, Intel, Keysight, MathWorks, Microsoft, Motorola Solutions, National Instruments, SilTerra and ViTrox with Dreamcatcher Consulting as the secretariat supported by Talent Corp Malaysia, MDEC, and various government and professional bodies.
IMDC is open to all final year undergraduate engineering or computer science students in Malaysia with the goal to promote innovative culture in engineering design work, tackle real-world problems with practical engineering solutions, and churn out the brightest talents for product development, further research, and commercialisation.
Swinburne Sarawak students took first prize in the Intel track for an intelligent parking system called “InstantPark” which uses smartphones with Near-Field Communication protocol.
Its inventors Matthew Chai Min Enn, Desmond Chin Chung Choon, and Janan Ezekiel Wong Huai En, supervised by Dr Chua Hong Siang, bagged RM5,000 and three tablets.
The trio also won first place in the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Internet of Things (MDEC IoT) Awards which came with RM3,000.
“InstantPark” provides directions to recommended bays upon entry into a parking lot, including real time traffic information and a plan of the area.
An integrated platform allows shopping malls to feature promotions.
Sharing the second prize money of RM3,000 and three smartphones in the same track were Dr Hudyjaya Siswoyo Jo’s team of Lim Hong Jian, Aylwin Chai Bing Chun and Wong Yeng Liong for an “Autonomous oil palm loose fruit collector”.
The wheelbarrow-mounted robotic arm could pick up scattered oil palm fruit from the ground, doing away with the human labour normally required for such tasks.
The team carted away the Sime Darby Design Challenge Award, taking another RM3,000.
Also winning second prize were Wee Kuan Howe and Kenneth Lai Jian Yan for their “Vision based driving assistance system: the third eye”, in the ViTrox track.
The system detects a motorist’s level of attention and alerts the driver when the vehicle is too close to the one ahead, thus reducing the chance of a collision.
The pair, overseen by Dr Chua, bagged RM3,000 and two smartphones.
In third place in the Microsoft track were the brother and sister team of Daniel Vong Wei Liang and Stella Vong Wei Jing, pursing RM1,000 for their intelligent white cane system.
The “Mobility and navigation aid for the visually impaired” device features an audio alert and an emergency messaging system.
The siblings walked away with another RM2,000 when they won the second place in the MDEC IoT Awards, and emerged “Innovate Malaysia Startup Pre-Accelerator Winners”.
Dr Almon Chai sat as the advisor for the team.
A “Reverse vending machine” that collects used food and beverage containers based on materials created by Dominic Ting Fu Rong and Tan Yong Jia, supervised by Dr Hudyjaya, took the consolation prize in the National Instruments track.