On 19th April, six Singaporean teams battle it out in the Imagine Cup Finals (Singapore Chapter) to earn a spot to the Imagine Cup World Finals in Seattle, Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) on August 2nd, 2014.
Here are some highlights from the exciting presentations:
1. Games Category: Life Choices.
Team Life Choices developed a 2D game that teaches youths about the implications of life choices that are made by “modelling life as close as possible into a game with controlled environmental settings”. Within the game, users are able to engage fellow players and take part in activities and events to earn experience points. At the end of the game, each player will be provided with a game summary that provides advice on their life choices and recommendations to improve their life experiences. The team hoped to gradually roll out this product across schools in Singapore.
2. World Citizenship Category: I-HEARD (Intelligent Hearing Device).
Team Elites created a sophisticated communications tool that utilizes voice and text translation technologies to improve communications for the deaf and mute.
The team utilized a range of technologies to offer continuous speech recognition and location tracking capabilities, such as Bing and Nuance speech recognition, Bing translator, and Bing Map and Reverse GeoCoding.
The audience was impressed by the sophistication of the tool and the team’s passion for helping to address a real-life challenge for a specific segment of the community that has not been adequately addressed till today.
3. Innovation Category: FACE (Facial Analyzer for Crowd Emotions).
Team Stand produced an innovative system that enables the real-time capture and analysis of facial expressions with a wide range of uses in the private and public sector, such as retail, business analytics, and profiling.
The system utilizes machine learning algorithms to improve its classification and analysis engine so as to increase its accuracy of predicting race, gender, age, and emotions.
With its rich data sets, the system is able to generate a wide range of analytics reports with classification intervals.
As noted by the judges, one of the key challenges for Face is the thorny issue of privacy. However, as highlighted by a recent report on marketing for millennials, 40% of millennials are able to identify specific digital information that is tracked and collected by companies. The key to making these data tracking activities acceptable to the general public is to be transparent about the types of data that is tracked, and to assure consumers that these information will not be mistreated.
I would like to congratulate all of the teams on their amazing innovations which addresses real-life challenges. As pointed out by Mr. Tan Chun Siong, Microsoft Technical Evangelist and organizer of Imagine Cup (Singapore Chapter), this competition is the start of their journey and he hopes that the teams will continue to work with Microsoft to refine their products and bring it to market. Continue to Dream It, Build It, and Live It!
What do you think of the Imagine Cup Finals? Do you have other great events and conferences that you’d like us to cover? Do share with us your experiences and recommendations in the comments below.
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