- Team smartARM from Canada Emerge Victorious at Imagine Cup World Finals 2018
- Strong showing by Asia Pacific Teams this year with Team Mediated Ear from Japan coming in 3rd place
- A total of 8 teams from the Asia Pacific region made it to the semi-finals, including Team Pine from Malaysia
Microsoft announced the winners of the 16th annual Imagine Cup, the world’s premier student technology competition where students from around the globe team up to solve some of the world’s biggest problems with technology.
Team smartARM from Canada took home the top honors with their functional robotic prosthetic hand that is powered by Microsoft Azure. The hand is equipped with a camera embedded in the palm to help recognize objects and calculate the most appropriate grip for the object. With the help of technologies such as machine learning and computer vision, the arm is able become more functional as it learns and captures more data.
Besides US$85,000 cash prize and an Azure grant worth US$50,000, Team smartARM will also have a mentoring session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Coming in second place was Team iCry2Talk from Greece, whose project enables parents to decipher the message behind a baby’s crying in real-time. The low-cost, non-invasive intelligent technology associates the cries with specific physiological and psychological states, depicting the results in a text, image, and a voice message.
The Asia Pacific region had an exceptional showing this year, with Team Mediated Ear from Japan clinching third place in the world finals. Their project was a software for hearing-impaired individuals to focus on a specific speaker among a multitude of conversations through the help of deep learning.
Microsoft also added three special awards that represent the current state of digital transformation. The winners for the respective categories included two teams from the Asia Pacific region:
- Artificial Intelligence: Team Sochware from Nepal, whose solution is designed to help farmers identify plant diseases, suggest mitigation strategies, connect with experts, and get updated with recent agriculture findings to ensure more successful harvests.
- Big Data: Team DrugSafe from India, which is a multi-layered holistic drug validation system using technologies built upon big data to inform users if specific drugs are safe for use.
- Mixed Reality: Team Pengram from the United States with their AR/VR platform designed for engineers to be “teleported” into a workspace when required.
Each team received US$15,000 in cash prize and US$30,000 Azure grant to help further their endeavors.
This year, 8 teams from the Asia Pacific region made it to the semi-finals, underscoring one of the largest representation from a single region at the competition.
Among those 8 teams was Team Pine from Malaysia. Team Pine was the grand prize winner of the Imagine Cup Regional Finals held in Kuala Lumpur on the 5th of April this year. Their invention was a handheld sensing device that can help pineapple farmers efficiently and effectively evaluate optimal levels of ripeness prior to harvest, in a non-intrusive manner.
The team, which consists of 3 students from Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), also managed to be listed as one of the finalists under the Big Data category and was eventually in the top 15 out of 49 teams that qualified for the world finals. Though not crowned winners this time, Team Pine has no intention of stopping their journey through technology innovation, as they plan to continue working on their invention once they return to Malaysia.
Celebrating 16 years of empowering students to create the world of tomorrow
This year, 49 teams from 33 countries, including 20 teams from the Asia Pacific region, were selected to travel to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to showcase their ingenuity in leveraging the power of modern technology to solve some of the world’s pressing challenges. Prior to this, the student teams spent months developing their solutions, go-to-market plans and competing in National Finals.
“At Microsoft, we continue to encourage young innovators to have the courage to step up and develop solutions that will solve real-world problems. We are proud to see so many students on the world stage, sharing game changing ideas that will indefinitely reshape the world,” said K. Raman, Managing Director at Microsoft Malaysia.
Held annually since 2003, the Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition, known affectionately by participants as the “Olympics of student technology competitions”. To date, nearly 1.8 million students from over 190 countries have engaged with the Imagine Cup program.
For more information about Imagine Cup, please visit https://www.imaginecup.com/.