UTAR team won the Merit Award in the One-Belt-One-Road University Category (“一带一路”高校优胜奖) at the 9th China Students Service Outsourcing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (CSSOIEC) (第九届中国大学生服务外包创新创业大赛). The competition was held in Wuxi, China from 30 May to 1 June 2018.
Themed ‘public entrepreneurship and mass innovation’, the competition aimed to provide a platform for students to showcase their creativity, to arouse students’ interest in the service industry utilising modern technology and to encourage higher learning institutions to foster more talented people for the service outsourcing industry.
The winning team was comprised of three students from the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology (FICT) Computer Science, namely Bernard Lee Jian Wen, Benson Thew Thung Liang and Leonard How Xun Zhen. They walked away with a cash prize of RM1,250, a trophy and a certificate of participation each. The team was mentored by FICT Academic Development and Undergraduate Programmes Deputy Dean Dr Cheng Wai Khuen.
With the aim of solving issues that are embedded in the physical menu nowadays, their winning project titled “Interactive augmented reality (AR) food ordering system” allows users (customers of restaurant) to view the food and menu in AR view by using their smartphone. The food and menu would appear in the 3D model.
Lee and Thew explained, “The food would appear in 3D instead of 2D. This gives the users a clearer view of how the food looks like and the exact portion of the food. We will provide a web-based solution to allow restaurant owners to register an account, choose their food menu template design and then add their food items such as image of food in 3D model, name, price and description. Through this project, we can help to reduce the waste of food and improve the interaction between the user and the menu.”
They added, “We believe our project stood out from the rest because the app was creative and useful. We have seen the existence of physical food menu in the market for more than two decades and the cost is much higher. Although most of the food ordering system has been digitized, it does not differ much from the traditional food menu. With the proliferation of smartphone and improvement of smartphone computing power, users can make use of our app on their smartphones easily.”
How said, “We wanted to see a bigger world and further enhance our skills on programming and problem-solving.” Lee agreed and said, “Nowadays, Artificial Intelligent (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT) and AR are the trend in the technology market. We found that many of the teams have developed AI, VR, IoT and AR projects and most of them are ready to be commercialised in the market. One of our purposes to join the competition is also to commercialise our system in China.”
Being proud to represent UTAR and also Malaysia, the team expressed their gratitude to UTAR for providing a strong foundation for them to learn and to better understand the latest technology and programming skills. Besides, they also commented that the strong academic atmosphere at the university provided them with an excellent learning experience and enabled them to achieve better academic performance.
The competition was jointly organised by Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China and People’s Government of Wuxi Municipality, China. More than 5,000 teams from 401 higher learning education institutions in and outside China participated in the competition this year.
The competition attracted more than 30 famous enterprises in China such as Alibaba, Huawei, Inspur, ArcSoft, Pactera and Blue Gull to participate in the proposition related to the service outsourcing demand of the enterprises. The topics closely followed the trends of the service outsourcing industry, including the application of new technologies such as cloud computing, AI, big data, IoT, mobile internet, smart manufacturing and smart cities.
Thew (second from right) and Lee with the winners from other countries.
拉曼大学 Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR)
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