Lee (left) and Tan won third prize for their Wastenager project.
KUCHING: Two Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus teams comprising electrical and electronic engineering students performed well at the eighth Innovate Malaysia Design Challenge (IMDC) Grand Finale at MaGIC Cyberjaya recently.
A press release said under the Microsoft Track category, students Alfred Tan Jia Yee and Lee Hui En We won the third prize with their project Wastenager – a smart waste management system that utilises Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and computer and mobile applications.
A combination of the words waste and manager, Wastenager’s main objective is to provide sufficient information on waste management facilities to tackle illegal dumping issues, as well as allowing users to dispose of their bulky waste in the most convenient, cheap, and sustainable way.
The other team consisting Bernard Chang and Haritharan M Nanthakumaran came in second under the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Design Challenge.
Their project titled ‘Acoustic Range for Elephant Prevention with Network Security’ describes a prototype implementation for both detection and deterrent of elephants in a safe manner with the use of mobile applications for notification and data monitoring of the components in the router.
Chang and Haritharan developed a prototype for the detection and deterrent of elephants in a safe manner.
The prototype uses a passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor to activate a vibration sensor module, which triggers the speaker to either attract or deter elephants.
The ultrasonic sensor detects the distance of the elephant to the router and triggers the LED if it invades the set threshold distance.
The data is then transmitted using an XBee to the coordinator, which uploads it to their designated database, and the mobile application both notifies and displays the uploaded data by either using graphs or tables.
Both teams were supervised by Swinburne Sarawak School of Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science deputy head Dr Chua Hong Siang.
He said IMDC provides a great platform for final-year students to pitch their projects to industry experts, adding Swinburne Sarawak students are not only academically bright but also have the right technical skills to solve real-life problems.
IMDC is the largest design competition in Malaysia, involving third-year or final-year engineering, computer science, IT and science or mathematics undergraduates.
This year, 59 teams consisting of 814 students from public and private universities nationwide took part in the event jointly organised by Google, Intel, Keysight, MathWorks, Microsoft, SAS, SilTerra, and Solidworks, and managed by Dream Catcher Consulting Sdn Bhd.
It was supported by the Ministry of Education, Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (MaGIC), and Institute of Engineers Malaysia.
For more information about Swinburne Sarawak, visit www.swinburne.edu.my.