Jakarta, 5 April 2023 – Indonesian youth once again make the country proud at a global event. Two teams of Informatics Engineering and Computer System students from Universitas Komputer Indonesia (UNIKOM) advanced as the world finalists of Imagine Cup 2023, an annual competition from Microsoft that invites students all over the world to solve the world’s biggest issues with technology. They are MoonChick – an innovation to empower farmers in rural areas, and Snailly – an innovation to create a healthy and safe internet for children, that successfully brought the two great innovators group as the world finalist in this prestigious event.
“MoonChick and SnaillyProject are teams of student that are part of UNIKOM’s CodeLabs Division in the Directorate of Innovation and Competition Directorate. The teams consist of students from various majors and semesters that share the same enthusiasm for technological innovation. We are proud of their achievements at the Imagine Cup 2023. With the noble goal to provide modern solutions to solve issues within our society, their hard work has yielded an extraordinary result. Proficiat to both teams, and thanks to all UNIKOM and Microsoft team that have provided a golden opportunity for our young talents,” said Dian Dharmayanti, Lecturer at Universitas Komputer Indonesia as the supervisor of both teams along with Adam Mukharil Bachtiar, another supervisor.
MoonChick (Monitoring on Chicken – Enabling Automation for Your Poultry – Innovation for the ‘Earth’ Category
Inspired by the productions decrease experienced by Indonesia’s local chicken breeders due to the deaths of many livestock during harvest season, the MoonChick team conducted field research and found that several environmental factors contributed to this problem. These environmental factors have a negative impact on the quality of livestock living areas and have affected the health of the livestock itself. However, breeders find it difficult to manually retrieve, map, and manage the data, both regarding the livestock’s health and the environmental situation. Especially because the average farm has more than 600 livestock. Therefore, MoonChick proposes a smart collaboration system based on big data analytics, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) for the breeders which can be accessed in remote areas with limited internet access.
“MoonChick can help the breeders manage their farms effectively. For example, by giving a notification to breeders when there are unusual environmental conditions happening in the area or when the livestock gets sick. Utilizing Azure Machine Learning and Azure Blob Storage for data correlation analysis, as well as Azure Custom Vision for image detection, this notification is also supported with more in-depth information for users, such as what environmental circumstances that may cause the livestock’s death or how to treat the diseases,” said Muhammad Farid Laksmana, MoonChick team representative.
“The challenge is how we ensure that MoonChick technology is adaptable to the breeders working system since most of them are in remote areas. Understanding this, we developed an edge computing mechanism that allows MoonChick’s IoT to work even with low internet bandwidth. We hope what we’re doing can accelerate the success of our local chicken breeders and help them mitigate other potential risks,” Andi Firmansyah added, MoonChick team member.
Before becoming the Imagine Cup 2023 world finalist, MoonChick first became the runner up of the Epic Challenge at Microsoft Imagine Cup Asia Regional Competition in February 2023, and was chosen as the Imagine Cup Asia finalist to represent Indonesia globally.
SnaillyProject, Innovation for the ‘Education’ Category
This innovation is inspired by the increasing number of young children who are exposed to the digital realm when they’re not yet able to process information suitable for their age. Such problem might end in a bad internet experience for children. In Indonesia, adolescents have the highest internet penetration rate compared to other age groups, reaching 99.16% for ages 13 – 18 years. Children aged 5 – 12 years are also part of the list, with a slightly lower percentage of 62.43%.* Understanding this situation, the SnaillyProject team developed a machine learning-based application they called Snailly, to empower parents to monitor their children’s internet activity and ensure their online safety. This application was also selected as the winner of the Asia-level in education category, winning a prize worth USD 2,500 and Azure credit from the Microsoft Founders Hub.
“Utilizing the capabilities of Azure Machine Learning, the Snailly app can detect and block sites that contain content with negative keywords. If children are intentionally or unintentionally open sites with keywords that are considered inappropriate for them, parents will get a notification. This collection of sites will also be stored in a history database built using Azure Blob Storage, so that parents are able to check the existing block list. We hope this innovation can simplify the monitoring process for parents in this digital sphere which was previously more limited, and support safer internet in Indonesia,” said Adinda Regita Afifah Chayani, SnaillyProject team representative.
“In determining which sites or content are prohibited, there is a certain subjectivity behind it. We realize that every parent has their own criteria regarding what their children are permitted to access. Therefore, we added a whitelist feature that allows parents to create personalized blocked sites. With this feature, parents can enter keywords that might be different from the Machine Learning’s suggestion, regarding what should and shouldn’t be blocked,” added Mohammad Aziz Riza, SnaillyProject team member.
One Collaboration to Empower Indonesia
The achievements of UNIKOM’s students, which in the process had work together to perfect each other’s ideas, increasingly show the limitless potential of Indonesia’s young generation. Not only that, this achievement underscores how with positive intentions and ideas, technology could bring a positive impact to the world.
“The success the two student teams from UNIKOM, who are named as the world finalists of the Imagine Cup 2023, is proof that age is not a limit to achieve dreams, or to contribute towards our society. The innovation made by the finalists allowed them to develop ideas into solutions with big impacts. We hope their achievements will inspire other young tech enthusiasts across Indonesia. Let’s continue to work together to empower Indonesia,” said Irving Hutagalung, Country Engineering Lead, Office of the CTO, Microsoft Asia, who has also provided coaching to both teams during their participation in the Imagine Cup 2023.
For students who wish to take part in the next Imagine Cup, register at https://imaginecup.microsoft.com/
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* Data Indonesia. (2022). Teenagers Top First Place of Highest Internet Use in Indonesia.