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Students and teachers of the Vocational Training Council (VTC) generate innovative ideas to promote the development of Hong Kong as a smart city, leveraging technologies like cloud computing, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). This has resulted in four inventions winning Hong Kong ICT Awards 2017 and showcasing the excellence of VTC students and teachers in applied research. Students of the Information Technology Discipline have developed a mobile app to help train the elderly suffering from dementia. Other remarkable devices include the “Dr Cloud” electronic diagnosis system that assists medical and health care staff, the “AR Touch” mobile app that teaches children to learn Chinese vocabulary, and the “Learning and Teaching with Multiple VR/AR Systems for Engineering” developed by the Engineering Discipline. Year Two students, LEUNG Shuk-ki, HUNG Hoi-ming and YIM Hong-shek of the Information Technology Discipline of Chai Wan Campus of the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE), a member institution of VTC, have developed a mobile app for elderly dementia sufferers to remember their way and have their daily living skills honed. The students won the silver prize for the Best Student Invention (Tertiary or Above) Award. The honoured IVE students are concerned about the greying population of Hong Kong and hope to improve lives of the elderly stricken with dementia. With the assistance of a registered occupational therapist at a community centre in Shumshuipo, they developed an app tailored for electronic mobile devcies like smartphones and tablets. When the elderly download the app, the mobile device will display in real time the particular place they are in and neighbouring areas like hospitals and residences so they can recognize their way. Through the small games and tasks provided, their everyday living skills can be trained, say, to test their ablity to correctly select the necessary sundries to be brought along for a medical appointment, to tell the positions in which household objects are placed, and recognise the best way to go to the hospital. In this way, personal training to meet needs in health care, food, the home and transportation is made available. The app will collect data on the status of the patient for the information of the occupation therapist to facilitate follow-up action. Applying what they have learnt in the classroom, the students are making use of the AR and software development technologies in the app, which is now being piloted in the community centres for the elderly. The team plans for further optimisation of the product for a launch into the market to help more dementia sufferers. Year Two students of the Higher Diploma in Cloud and Data Centre Administration, namely ANG Yau-yu, LAM Wai-kei, and NG Man-yiu, and Year One students NG Ka-yin, LAI Kam-to and LAM Ka-lok of Information Technology Discipline of IVE (Lee Wai Lee) won the bronze prize for the Best Student Invention (Tertiary or Above) Award. Together they developed the “Dr Cloud” electronic diagnosis system that conducts real time voiced conversations with the patient through the “small doctor” in virtual animation shown on an electronic screen. Coupled with face detection technologies, a preliminary diagnosis will be made. Through AR technologies, the patient will be further instructed to use simple medical equipment for basic check ups like measuring body temperature, blood pressure and heartbeat. Immediate analysis of the diagnosis results will be provided by the system, facilitating medical staff in determining initial triage. The team hopes to promote the system to community centres, homes for the elderly, day care centres and hospitals. Merit winner in the same category, YAN Chi-shing, of the Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Digital Media offered by the University of the West of England, Bristol in collaboration with the School for Higher and Professional Education (SHAPE), created the mobile learning software named “AR Touch”. The work combines the traditional word card design and AR technologies where children can download the mobile app and zero in on the word card with the camera and, in an instant, corresponding objects on the card will spring to life and the app will pronounce the corresponding words like “horse”, “dog” and “cat”. Child users can listen to Chinese and English pronunciation of the words in a fun-filled way, raising learning interest and effectiveness. IVE also deploys innovative technologies in teaching from which the Engineering Teaching Team developed the “Learning and Teaching with Multiple AR/VR Systems for Engineering”, which won them the silver prize in the category of Best Digital Entertainment Award (Interaction Design Stream). Through an AR/VR simulation systems, students are taken through different workplace environments and encouraged to undertake different tasks such as identifying safety hazards and conducting machine inspections in virtual plant room and aircraft hangar environments. Taking the module in aircraft maintenance as an example, the student wearing the VR glasses will enter the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, simulating the ramp, hangar and workshop, to check for damaged parts and defects, and may even undertake emergency repair with the aid of the Head Mount Display (HMD) VR System. The aircraft maintenance module apart, the Team has also completed the system design for modules on building services engineering and automotive engineering programmes, which will be extended to other engineering specialisms in due course to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness. Yet another SHAPE student of the Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Digital Media, CHAN Chin-hong, won Special Mention for Editing in the Best Digital Entertainment (Animation & Visual Effects) category on the strength of his work, “In My Utopia”. Steered by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, and organised by Hong Kong ICT industry associations and professional bodies, the Hong Kong ICT Awards aims at recognising and promoting outstanding information and communications technology (ICT) inventions and applications, thereby encouraging innovation and excellence among Hong Kong’s ICT talents and enterprises in their constant pursuit of creative and better solutions to meet business and social needs. There are eight categories under the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2017 The Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) is a member of the VTC Group. The 9 IVE campuses are located across the territory. Together, they provide vocational education for secondary graduates as well as people in employment. IVE courses leading to the award of Higher Diploma and Diploma of Foundation Studies cover various academic disciplines including Applied Science; Business Administration; Childcare, Elderly and Community Services; Design; Information Technology; Engineering; as well as Hotel, Service and Tourism Studies. Website: www.ive.edu.hk The School for Higher and Professional Education (SHAPE) is a member of the VTC Group. SHAPE was established to provide further study opportunities to Higher Diploma graduates and other sub-degree holders. Full-time and part-time top-up degree programmes are offered locally in collaboration with internationally renowned local and overseas universities and students can normally complete their programmes within one to two years. SHAPE has now established collaboration with 13 local and overseas universities offering more than 50 top-up degree programmes. Website: www.shape.edu.hk Media Enquries: 2836 1790 / 2836 1046 |
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