Nanyang Polytechnic Students Crowned Champions at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Singapore 2017 Finals

Nanyang Polytechnic Students Crowned Champions at

the Microsoft Imagine Cup Singapore 2017 Finals

Standing out with their originality and execution, Team HeartSound will represent Singapore at the Imagine Cup Southeast Asia Regional Finals in Manila, Philippines on 23 to 26 April

The winning team of Microsoft Imagine Cup Singapore 2017 – Team HeartSound from Nanyang Polytechnic

SINGAPORE, 10 April 2017 — Microsoft today crowned students from Nanyang Polytechnic as the champions of Microsoft Imagine Cup Singapore 2017. Comprising three students from across faculties, Team HeartSound stood out in the competition with their S3 (Smart StethoScope) project, which impressed the panel of judges at the Imagine Cup Singapore 2017 Finals with its originality and execution.

Team HeartSound’s S3 (Smart StethoScope) aims to help combat cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke in Singapore, an issue that causes 16 deaths every day. By combining stethoscope and electrocardiography (ECG) capabilities into a small wearable device that helps users monitor for abnormal sounds in the heart, S3 (Smart StethoScope) makes it easy for users to monitor their heart conditions in their own homes without any specific medical knowledge or training. The device is also able to send the captured data to other mobile devices powered by Windows 10, iOS or Android, so that the data can be viewed by patients, and even be sent on to doctors when abnormal conditions are flagged.

Into its 15th edition, this year’s Imagine Cup Singapore competition received a total of 67 project entries, presenting a wide range of original applications and solutions that displayed unprecedented potential to influence the environment, healthcare, fashion and travel industries. Six teams from Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore eventually made the Finals, to compete for a spot to represent Singapore at the first-ever Imagine Cup Southeast Asia Regional Finals, to be held in Manila, Philippines on 23 to 26 April 2017. Seven teams from the Southeast Asia Regional Finals will subsequently advance to the World Finals, to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA, in July, for a chance to be crowned the Imagine Cup World Champion, and walk away with up to US$100,000 in cash and prizes.

“On behalf of Microsoft Singapore and the panel of judges, we would like to commend all participating student teams for spending the past few months dreaming, creating and building solutions with their technological know-how. We hope that the Imagine Cup competition has given them a first-hand appreciation of how their innovation can help transform how we live and work, while equipping them with the confidence to harness the power of technology to better the world. We congratulate Team HeartSound from Nanyang Polytechnic on their win at this year’s Imagine Cup Singapore Finals, and wish them the very best in doing Singapore proud in the next phase of competition at the Southeast Asia Regional Finals,” said Nobuhiro Ito, Director of Developer Experience and Evangelism, Microsoft Singapore.

Celebrating the Finalists of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Singapore 2017

In addition to the winning – Team HeartSound from Nanyang Polytechnic – here are the other five finalists at the Imagine Cup Singapore 2017 Finals.

FIRST RUNNER-UP

1. Team H2C (Singapore Polytechnic)

Team H2C, comprising three students from the School of Digital Media & Infocomm Technology at Singapore Polytechnic, aims to help people address the issue of remembering reminders, images and other information that they might need in the future with the Vaultix centralised storage system.

Vaultix keeps people organised by exploiting the very same habit that people have already been using via chat platforms today. Users can simply send reminders, images and chats to Vaultix, and it will be able to automatically categorise it and store it safely and securely. Whenever the user needs the information, the intelligent search engine built into Vaultix will enable it to instantly return the required information.

SECOND RUNNER-UP

2. Team Masters (Nanyang Technological University)

Team Masters, comprised of three students from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University, aims to make online shopping a seamless experience with Yux, a personal AI fashion assistant, that comes in the form of a mobile app. Noticing the abundance of online shopping options today, and how shoppers are slowly losing track of their purchases, the team designed an intelligent app that can help consumers make smarter decisions for their fashion purchases.

Powered by computer vision, deep learning and facial recognition technologies, users can benefit from receiving highly personalised fashion suggestions and tips via their own chatbot fashion assistant on their devices. Yux will not only help users to save the time and hassle of going through racks of clothes for the best deals, it also keeps track of fashion trends, celebrities and style icons, and makes recommendations based on comprehensive data and processes based on the user’s current styles, and preferences.

FINALISTS

3. Team Genesis (Temasek Polytechnic)

Team Genesis, comprising three students from Temasek Polytechnic’s School of Engineering, took on the challenge of tackling the age-old issue of the lack of manpower in the cleaning sector with their Live Smart and Clean Smartsmart monitoring system, designed to assist cleaning agencies with the management of resources without having their cleaners physically inspect every area to ensure cleanliness.

The Live Smart and Clean Smart system allows users to monitor the cleanliness status of rubbish bins and toilets located in public areas, through a network of wireless sensor nodes installed at designated spots. Feeding real-time data to a central control station, the system can provide alerts to users about the cleaning service requirements at designated areas when a bin reaches closes to maximum capacity, or when a toilet emits an unbearable odour.

Over time, the data collected can provide predictive insights to organisations, aiding manpower and resource planning in the long run. Supervisors at cleaning agencies can also leverage the insights from the Live Smart and Clean Smart system, to deploy cleaners to garbage points before maximum capacity is reached, benefitting organisations while ensuring that hygiene levels are met consistently.

4. Team NaturalCorner (Nanyang Technological University)

Team NaturalCorner, comprised of three students from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, aims to connect urban dwellers with nature, and help individuals better connect with the food they consume, through their NaturalCorner compact agricultural system. Developed to accommodate the time, space, and resource restrictions of modern urban living, NaturalCorner caters to the constraints of local apartments, where families will be able to enjoy the happiness of harvesting their own fruits and veggies from their own little farms.

Equipped with sensors, injector boxes and stepper motors which are connected to the cloud via Azure IoT Hub, growers are able to control and configure environments through a mobile app. With the use of a built-in camera within the system, and the Azure Cognitive Services to recognise each stage of growth, giving NaturalCorner the ability to recommend customised growth plans and optimise yield for users.

5. Team TravaMe (National University of Singapore)

National University of Singapore’s Team TravaMe, comprising three students from the Bachelor of Computer Science – Renaissance Engineering Programme, aims to provide inclusive travel for all with GoTnT (Trip and Travel), an automated travel assistant that utilises artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and data mining built on Microsoft Azure.

Besides providing a one-stop solution for common travel-related problems such as the tedious search for scattered information, time-consuming trip planning process and difficult prioritisation of varied preferences, GoTnT is looking to make travel more accessible and enjoyable for people with disabilities. In addition to automating personalised trip itineraries, GoTnT is able to answer questions in a human-like way via a built-in chatbot, objectively assess the accessibility of different locations through object recognition, and enable users to visualise their travel locations in 360 degrees using virtual reality (VR).