Polytechnic students win awards for using technology to improve lives

14 Aug 2018

Article featured SP’s Diploma in Electrical and Electronic Engineering graduates Chryston Chua and Neo Yizhe, who are one of five teams who won the Lee Hsien Loong Interactive Digital Media Smart Nation Award. The award recognises polytechnic students in the areas of interactive digital media. Inspired by Chryston’s grandmother who had dementia, the pair developed a dementia tracker which can send caregivers up to 140 text messages a day to inform them of a patient's whereabouts. Apart from Chryston and Yizhe, six students from RP’s Diploma in Design for User Experience and Diploma in Electrical and Electronic Engineering also won the award for a collaboration with the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS). Their project titled CHIKIT consists of a wearable tracking and fidget device similar to a fidget cube, a home monitor, and a mobile application for caregivers to track and monitor the intellectually disabled. In addition, five students from NP’s Diploma in Biomedical Engineering and Diploma in Environmental and Water Technology worked with the National Environment Agency (NEA) to develop an automated "gravitrap" that traps and kills female mosquitoes, using bait-water to lure them to a sticky tape. Currently, the NEA uses about 50,000 gravitraps, and their operators have to manually refill the bait-water, retrieve trapped remains and count the number of trapped mosquitoes. The team's device can allow NEA to pinpoint which gravitrap's bait-water is insufficient, thereby helping them to prepare and allocate their manpower. (The Straits Times Online)