5 December 2019 – Six students from Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) bagged awards at the ASEAN Makerthon 2019 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that was held for three days starting from 2 December 2019 at the Innovation Centre of 5G (IC5G) UTM-Ericsson at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Kuala Lumpur campus.
Following the success of ASEAN Makerthon 2017, this year’s event is a unique competition that runs on a closed 5G network organised for the very first time. It was organised by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) in collaboration with ARM, Celcom Axiata Berhad, Ericsson Malaysia and UTM.
The three-day event challenged the participants to produce physical prototypes related to 5G within 30 hours from the start of the competition. The prototypes has to be in line with the theme entitled ‘Impact of the 5G Revolution towards Industrial Revolution 4.0’.
The competition was opened to members of ASEAN as well as ASEAN TELSOM Dialogue Partners such as China, Japan, South Korea, India, the European Union and the United States. Only two finalist teams per ASEAN Member State and one finalist team per TELSOM Dialogue Partner were shortlisted. The two finalist teams representing Brunei were both from UTB. The teams were shortlisted by the Brunei focal point, Authority for Info-Communications Technology Industry (AiTi) after intense preliminary screening process.
The first UTB team representing the Sultanate includes three (3) second year students currently undertaking BEng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, the students are Muhammad Zahin Syafiq bin Haji Md Azmi, Emily Lai Jia Shyan, and Zul Hazmi bin Ahmad Nasir. The team won the ‘Most Social Impact Award’ with their prototype named ‘Vibrant Smart Home’.
Vibrant Smart home is based using Internet of Things (IoT) to assist the elderlies to perform their daily tasks and helps to ensure safety of the users. The system requires a number of communication that needs to be placed in strategic location to monitor the environments and control the appliances. Various sensors will be used to capture information and control the environment, automate different appliances such as lighting and heating, and monitor the safety of the users through micro-camera. The systems will learn the behavior of the users using the data collected over the module. The development are particularly easy to install with downloadable script, affordable, scalable and accessible anywhere and everywhere through 5G .
According to Emily Lai Jia Shyan, the competition has allowed the team to gain experience and come up with an innovative solution to address the issue of the aging population and the needs for automated caring systems using the features provided by 5G and IoT devices.
The second UTB team whom also bagged award at the competition were from the School of Computing and Informatics under the Computing Network and Security programme area. The team member includes Muhammad Hanif bin Jumat, a PhD student; Muhammad Hafizulezwan bin Abd Hamid and Awangku Muhammad Nur Ikram bin Pengiran Ilimi, final year undergraduate degree students. The team bagged the ‘Best Sustainability and Business Award’ for their prototype given the name – ‘Project Z’.
Project Z is a 5G based smart agriculture for water control and management system. To achieve the food security for Brunei on paddy production, one of the team members, Muhammad Hafizulezwan bin Abd Hamid said that paddy farmers in Brunei encounter two main problems mainly on soil acidity and pest. To solve the soil acidity problem, the team developed a prototype that detects changes in the acidity level and with two water gates installed for water entering and leaving the paddy field that will ensure adequate flow of water. The team also intended to rectify issues related with pest by developing a camera system that detect birds in the paddy area. The prototype was not possible in the previous generation of mobile technology, and only possible in 5G due to its low latency and high throughput.
Prototypes created by the participants were evaluated by a panel of judges from various industries and institutions with expertise in the field of Industrial Revolution, 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). The four main judging criteria include originality of ideas, prototypes, business model and presentation.
