Nationwide contest highlights mobile applications by students

THREE of the best innovative mobile and wireless applications over the past eight years of the Sweep Innovation and Excellence Awards will soon test the market as business start-ups, making that huge leap from mere school projects into commercial products that people can actually use.

“Providing these young developers the platform to create applications that help solve life’s little problems fits with Smart’s goal of harnessing technology for people to live more,” said Ramon Isberto, Public Affairs Group head for Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart).

The all-girls team from the Mapua Institute of Technology that developed last year’s grand prize winner—Braille Cell Phone and Obstacle Detection Device will use fresh investments infused by Smart through Idea Space Foundation, Inc. to design and build a more compact and user-friendly Braille phone.

The two other teams that are being incubated are TimeFree, an SMS-based queuing system that allows people to make use of their time for other chores while waiting for their turn such as when they’re paying their bills of during visits to the clinic, and irace.ph, a platform for runners and organizers to interact and create events. All three are alumni of Sweep’s yearly innovation awards.

With this year’s theme, Technology in Nation-building, 10 teams will have the chance to take home not only the big prizes for the 9th Sweep Innovation and Excellence Awards this week but also the promise of having their prototypes transformed into
viable commercial applications.

Ateneo de Manila University: Botika-On-The-GoThis mobile phone app integrates medical information, inventory and medicine acquisition assistance. It is a repository of information on drug type, generic name and description; keeps track of the user’s medications, history and profile; and contains a directory of drug stores.

Ateneo de Manila University: LowCal The app is a diet planner and food tracker rolled into one convenient health app. “Low calorie” represents the diet planning capabilities of the app, while “local” is representative of its local food location tracking capability. It also helps keep track of your daily food intake.

Bulacan State University: Leptospira Bacteria Detector This app allows early detection of the Leptospira bacteria in human blood sample through image processing. Specimens are digitally captured and the images are sent to the database server via cloud computing for image processing and comparison. Results will then be sent to the
Android phone.

Colegio de San Juan de Letran: Switching and Monitoring System using Android in Wireless Technology (SWS.AWT) This Android mobile app acts as a wireless system that controls and monitors electrical appliances and lights at home. Apart from conserving electricity, it also lessens the risk of fire-related incidents especially when the user is away from home.

De La Salle Lipa: Automatic Detection of Traffic Density This app allows the user to monitor real-time traffic situation in a certain location via image processing. Users will receive a still image of the traffic situation in the location being monitored.

Those whose handsets do not support mobile image applications will receive a text message instead.

De La Salle Lipa: Systematic Market Application for Real-time Trading (Smart) Smart is an app that allows the users to buy their groceries via the mobile phone. It allows the user to choose and pay for the groceries through the application’s interface.

Once confirmed, the user can simply drop by the supermarket and pick up their groceries.

Notre Dame of Marbel University: Fly Smart With Fly Smart, the user can book and purchase plane tickets anytime, anywhere. Its reservation feature helps the subscriber book flights online and generates a QR code as plane ticket instead of printed e-tickets. The advertisement feature provides relevant information about the passenger’s destination.

Tarlac State University: Smart Head (Helmet Engineered for Accidents and Disasters) Smart Head is a device that facilitates faster rescue of victims of motorcycle accidents via global positioning system (GPS). It gives automatic updates of the victim’s vital signs to the nearest relative, police precinct or hospital via SMS, and allows recovery of a stolen motorcycle via GPS.

University of Southeastern Philippines: Wordify (A Selected Language Translator Using Digital Image Processing) Wordify is a mobile image processing-based Android app for language translation, which comes in handy when one is visiting a foreign country or encounters words in local dialects. Its sustained app data connection allows it to process translation requests regardless of Internet connectivity.

University of Southeastern Philippines: Doc Banana (A Digital Image Processing Approach for Early Banana Diseases Detection) Doc Banana is a mobile app that revolutionizes the banana disease detection process. A reliable image processing algorithm speeds up not only the detection of the early symptoms of Black Sigatoka, a common banana disease, but also the rate at which critical disease-related data are passed along the industry.

The top three winning teams will be awarded cash prizes of P500,000 (1st prize); P200,000 (2nd prize) and P100,000 (3rd prize), with the equivalent grants given to their schools.

The innovation awards, an anchor program of Sweep or Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program, is open to graduating students from any of the 44 partner-colleges and universities in the fields of electronics and communications engineering, and information technology. (PR)