According to a recent press release, it was announced that the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) team won 2nd Runner-up in the national UniMAKER MAKEATHON Challenge competition, winning RM20,000 worth of cash prizes, trophy and certificates, listed alongside other astounding winners from USM.
They bagged the win with their project entitled ‘Precision Farming with Deep Learning and IoT’ (Top winner, RM80,000) and ‘Making Malaysian Roads Safe Again’ (1st Runner-up, RM50,000).
The event was held in November 2018, at Damansara City Mall (DCM) Concourse Area & Hong Leong Tower Auditorium.
It was aimed at bringing up the aspiration of stimulating collaborative synergy amongst creative thinkers and innovators of various backgrounds of expertise from 32 participating universities, more than 1,000 high quality and innovative entries that promote the innovative solution of encountered problems from various field of market.
Organized by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia, the highlighted 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) theme thrived the objective of synergizing physical, digital and biological applications through the participation and nurturing a new and sustainable “Makers” movement in Malaysia.
Three students from the UTM School of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, were mentored by a group of business specialist from the UTM Centre for Student Innovation & Technology Entrepreneurship (UTM XCITE).
They research had much synergy with another product, the ‘Automated Guided Fish Trap (Bubu)’ invented by a researcher from the same school and faculty. This product is said to alleviate fishing activities within the coastal areas of less than 8 nautical miles.
Currently undergoing the final prototype development stage under the Prototype Development Fund Program facilitated by the Innovation and Commercialization Centre (ICC), their invention aims to be another commercially viable research product for the country.
Around the same time, UTM (in collaboration with UMW Holdings Berhad) organised a conference on AI and a summit, according to another press release.
The International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Industrial Applications 2018 (AIR2018) and The HPC, Grid, Cloud & Identity Summit (HGCI) were held in Putrajaya later in November.
The conference was officiated by the Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment & Climate Change (MESTECC), YB Yeo Bee Yin.
In the opening ceremony, the YB Minister also delivered a keynote address entitled “The Economic Renaissance Led by Robotics, A.I. and IoT” in front of more than 200 conference participants comprising academia and industry.
The AIR and HGCI 2018 conferences, themed “Industry-University Synergy Towards Industry 4.0”, it marked an inaugural collaboration for such an event between academia and industry.
The aims of the conference are to strengthen the cooperation between universities and industries, as well as to promote efforts to drive the nation towards the development of smart manufacturing sector to align with Industrial Revolution 4.0.
As such, the conference featured local and international keynote and plenary speakers of various backgrounds. The platinum sponsor brought the Chief Solutions Architect from a major media tech company in Singapore to deliver the conference’s second keynote address which focused on A.I. and Deep Learning Technology.
The Chair of the conference, professor at the Center for Artificial Intelligence & Robotics (CAIRO, UTM) deeply appreciated the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment & Climate Change (MESTECC) for their continuous support towards the AIR 2018 conference, which epitomises the synergy and collaborative efforts among universities and industries.
It is hoped that efforts like these will continue to attract more industries to collaborating with universities to support the country towards realising Industrial Revolution 4.0 and result in even more wins like the ones reported above.
