Imagine a world where technology helps solve the world's toughest problems – A theme that has been tailored to perfectly fit the Imagine Cup; a wonderland for Computer Science students across the globe. Since 2002, the goal for this annual event has been about bringing out the brightest young minds under the same roof to compete for an opportunity to change the world. And this year’s Imagine Cup 2011 promises to be no different.
Imagine Cup is sponsored and hosted by Microsoft; who had recently held a seminar about it in BRAC University on the 25th of January in an attempt to make us aware of what the undergraduates around the world are capable of, and more importantly, what we can be a part of should we wish to.
The idea of a competition attempting to produce solutions that will “change the world” might seem a bit exaggerative and farfetched to one who doesn’t know any better, but the fact is, it only takes a little imagination to start something big, and in Imagine Cup, the imagining part is only the beginning of it all.
Team Skeek from Kasetsart University, Thailand had realized something most of us wouldn’t or would simply rather turn a blind eye towards. There are more than 364 million people currently living in this world who have hearing impairments, but the amount of universities in the world for the hearing impaired are nowhere near being able to accommodate all the people who would have been pursuing advanced degrees had it not been for their inability to hear correctly. So, the team came up with a brilliant idea of a project which aimed to thin out the line between the impaired and the healthy, if not extinguish it completely, and all that would require is the acquisition of a laptop. Their project was named eyeFeel.
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Now the question would obviously be “how?”. Well to simply put, the program eyeFeel takes two inputs. A visual feed through the webcam and an audio feed through the microphone while both of them are pointed towards the speaker. Now the audio feed is converted into text and then later on translated into sign language. Then face recognizer and voice recognizer is used to attach the sign language in a tiny bubble next to the speaker’s head on screen. Simple, yet full of so much potential that it’s no wonder that Project eyeFeel won the first prize in last year’s Imagine Cup.
Another team that made their way to the finals was team TFZR from Serbia. Their project Brainwave aimed to help patients who may go into a sudden medically critical condition and might turn unable to call for assistance if they do (e.g. those with brain impairment or full/partial body paralysis). Brainwave tracks eye movements and reports periodically about the patient’s conditions to the doctor; leaving the patient from worrying about how to make a phone call before going into a state.
These were just a few examples of the countless many. Surely an idea doesn’t have to be revolutionary in order to be accepted in the Imagine Cup. It only has to be creative and must have the potential to come in use for the betterment of the world, even if by the slightest measures.
So if you’re a programmer with a thirst for challenge, why not put on your thinking cap and give Imagine Cup 2011 a go? For more information, visit bangladesh.imaginecup.com. Happy Imagining!
Written by:
Anik Momtaz
BRAC University, Microsoft Student Partners Network