In Chinese reality series Forget Me Not Cafe, five senior citizens with dementia work as servers in a restaurant, proving they are just as eager to socialise and live a full life despite their condition.
After watching the show, three Singapore Polytechnic students - Nashita Fatima, Chen Zihan and Fang Qian - were deeply inspired by the efforts to raise awareness of the condition and destigmatise it.
The trio decided to do their part to help people with Alzheimer's disease. They signed up as participants in the global Huawei ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Competition to create smart glasses called Forever-Smart Glasses.
The eyewear is designed to enable people with Alzheimer's recognise their loved ones. Powered by Huawei Cloud, the glasses are complemented by an app called Your Helper.
Featuring a built-in GPS positioning system, it tracks the elderly's whereabouts. Alerts to family members are automatically sent when he or she is lost, or far from home.
Benefiting lives, creating a breakthrough
For their project, this all-female group emerged winners at the global final of the Huawei ICT Competition 2019-2020, walking away with the grand prize and a TECH4ALL Social Contribution Award.
The girls were part of the 110 teams comprising 330 students from 39 countries and regions that competed in the grand final this year. The win has notched up another first; no Singapore team has won the competition before.
The Huawei ICT Competition is an annual international competition designed for tertiary students to inspire innovation by challenging their knowledge of ICT. The results of the Singapore team reflects Huawei's long-term commitment to the nation in nurturing local tech talent pipelines and further deepening industry-university collaborations.
Team leader Fang, 20, says: "During our research, we discovered that there are many wonderful AIoT products that improve people's quality of life. However, these do not focus on the elderly.
"We were motivated by the show as well as smart glasses technology to create a wearable AIoT device for Alzheimer's sufferers so that they won't forget their loved ones so easily."
Leveraging the power of digitalisation
Two other teams from Singapore also emerged winners in the competition - one from Temasek Polytechnic, which created a fall-alert system for the elderly, and another from Singapore Polytechnic that focused on the automatic detection of forest fires.
The Temasek Polytechnic team, consisting of Andrew Tan Yong Jun, Wong Yao Hui and Caleb Lee, created their fall-alert system using Huawei Cloud's proprietary features ECS, OBS, RDS and ModelArts, a one-stop AI development platform. The system can be integrated into hospital or even home CCTVs and IoT devices to help monitor blind spots, alerting care workers or family members if an elderly person falls.
"Falls are the second leading cause of unintentional deaths. Shortening response times to falls is critical as it can save lives and minimise serious injury to the elderly," said Wong, 19.
"The essence of our system is the predictive model powered by Huawei. It can be trained and deployed to reach a broader audience. Integrating the system into existing CCTVs using only software also saves resources."
Meanwhile, the team from Singapore Polytechnic comprising Cheong Wai Khin, Khor Kah Seng and Tan Xin Ying focused on addressing forest fires brought about by climate change. Their Intelligent Wildfire Mitigation System automatically detects forest fires through a cloud-based, serverless system.
It also generates a simulation of how the fire might spread using a prediction model, enabling early and more accurate planning for mitigation measures. This would also reduce environmental and financial damage, among other adverse impacts.
The wireless connection and a serverless architecture aim to maximise efficiency within areas affected by wildfires. The system leverages Huawei Cloud's technologies, enabling cost efficiency on a pay-per-use service rate. The model can also be customised with data from other regions, allowing for adaptability and scalability.
Grooming a new generation of ICT talent
Mr Nicholas Ma, chief executive officer of Huawei International, says of the winning teams from Singapore: "We are thrilled with the creativity and the inclusive heart of young Singapore talents, and proud to help these seeds of future ascend to the top of the world.
"As we accelerate into a digitalised post-pandemic world, it has never been more important to nurture our young talents to develop a sustainable, inclusive mind-set. The global Huawei ICT Competition showcased our continuous efforts to upskill and groom the local talent ecosystem to become more digitally inclusive."
Huawei's efforts in Singapore pave the way for another on-going global project, Seeds for the Future, which, in Singapore, is in collaboration with Infocomm Media Development Authority. Seeds of the Future sends young people from around the world for ICT-related training in China - developing talent and bridging communication between countries and cultures.
This perpetuates learning about advanced technologies in a global business environment, and gaining expertise and skills, thereby contributing to the progress of the global ICT industry.
Mr Ma adds: "We will continue working with our local partners and institutions of higher learning to create a healthy ICT talent ecosystem by building talent alliances and communicating the value of talent to ensure that we work towards becoming a Smart Nation together."
