Our project is a wearable intelligent surgical assistance system that reduces pre-operative physical damage to the patient, and also allows doctors to identify decapitation structures and make better decisions about further treatment options through devices such as HoloLens. For intraoperative emergencies, doctors can also mark them through 3D maps and consult remotely with other doctors to make better decision support.
Standing on the stage is a student from Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology (XUEST), and underneath are technologists from Microsoft, other practitioners in the same industry, and his mentor. This is not a classroom exercise, not to mention the student graduation defense, but the Microsoft Innovation Cup competition.
As a student group competition that has been held for 15 consecutive years, the Microsoft Innovation Cup attracts many teams every year. On May 16th and 17th of this year, 27 teams from 29 schools from all over China finally made it to the finals and gathered together in Shanghai. These students from all over the world surprised us by putting their 27 bright ideas into hands-on products. Perhaps we can also see something of the future in their creations.
Great ideas from students
This year's selection of 27 projects*** is full of eye-catching ideas. The Magic Mirror project, by a team called Dora C. Dream, utilizes a combination of Azure machine learning, computer vision, and motion capture technologies to turn a seemingly ordinary mirror into a smart drawing board for children to practice vocabulary words, and improve the vocabulary reserves of children in the early childhood age group by writing and drawing in the air with their hands.
A team called HugeHard, in order to solve the problem of English beginners getting stuck on words when reading English articles, has developed a mobile program called "Nightlight Words" that combines computer vision, text translation, and Azure machine-learning technology to find unfamiliar words by taking pictures of them while reading, so that the obstacles can be cleared up before reading, and so that the reading process can be better planned, which can be said to solve the problem. better planning, which can be said to solve the pain point of many English learning apps.
The inventions used to help the disadvantaged will undoubtedly make people feel warm. The WeeTAP team from Wenzhou Kennedy University tried to combine speech recognition technology as well as repetitive memory learning technology to establish a set of customizable training mechanisms, so that people suffering from dementia and intellectual disabilities can be treated with continuous exercise training; and the Cambrain team from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, who made a set of wearable devices that, when put on by visually-impaired people, can be used to help people with dementia and intellectual disabilities by means of depth vision The Cambrain team from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications has made a wearable device that, when worn by the visually impaired, is able to 'perceive' the surrounding environment through the use of a variety of functions such as depth vision sensors, motion capture, and voice interaction, which is both imaginative and practical.
There is also the modular design of the unmanned ship, can be in a variety of environments, autonomous testing, water quality testing environmental monitoring system, the internal module can achieve completely automatic GPS navigation, water quality sampling, testing and instant synchronization to the cloud, in the background of the data analysis library, can be collected to further analyze the data, and the development of water pollution early warning and response programs and so on, this is called ETHINK. The team called ETHINK designed this unmanned ship from an environmental point of view, and perhaps it will really come in handy in the near future.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we saw a lot of student work at the event, from virtual reality to machine learning, from image recognition to motion sensing, and they used their creativity to make an idea not so far-fetched.
While some aspects of their work, such as their slides and stage presence, were not outstanding, the judges were more interested in innovation, technology, concept and feasibility, and in the end, the team from Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology (XUEST) was awarded the Grand Prize for their wearable intelligent surgical assistance system, which has already been put into practical use.
After learning that the team's surgical assistance system has been patented and has established a cooperative relationship with Guangzhou People's Hospital, and has been put into medical use, the team has its own ideas on how to commercialize, and through the analysis of competing products, it also has a clear understanding of its own work, and on the stage of the Microsoft Innovation Cup Competition, such a passionate and practical team!
A team of passionate and practical people can be found on the stage of Microsoft Innovation Cup competition.
How does a student competition that has been running for 15 years come to fruition?
The Innovation Cup, which has been held for 15 consecutive years, is not only an arena for student geeks, but also a carnival, and Microsoft, as the organizer, is best able to feel the changes that have occurred in the event and in the students over the years.
In the margins of the competition, we interviewed Mr. Shen Yuanqing, chairman of Microsoft Asia-Pacific Technology Co., Ltd. and general manager of Microsoft China's Cloud Computing and Enterprise Division, who has been involved in the competition for three of the past 15 years and has been paying attention to the Innovation Cup program.
Microsoft's Innovation Cup started in 2003 and has a history of nearly 15 years so far. 2003 was still the year of the personal computer, and the Internet was just a content presentation, building a website, and then the concept of the so-called web service, which is the concept of some services in the cloud, started to emerge. But at that time, the cloud was not something we could all imagine.
So for a few years, a lot of people started to do some terminal business, especially in Shenzhen in this regard has stood in the global hardware development of the core position. So students did some innovations, such as how to select classes, how to rank grades, how to do distance learning, there are many different applications began to come out. By two or three years ago, people started focusing on the machine learning space. We used to use computers, but with deep learning, computers can help us use machines, and with that came a lot of different trends, and students started to make some transitions in that area.
There were a couple of highlights of this year's competition, the first being that the teams basically used cloud-based features. Five years ago everyone was in the clouds, not knowing when it was going to rain, and now, five years later, the cloud is an irreversible trend. Of the 27 teams that made it to the finals today, it's gratifying to see a lot of students starting to explore this aspect of AI, which is a very cutting-edge part of the process.
The second highlight is that there is a lot more innovation being done to help the less fortunate. We all know that there are 6 billion people on the surface of the earth, not everyone is like you and I can move freely, can access information, so we see that we called Cloud for Goods (Cloud Benefits the public) concept, the part of the cloud is not only for the top of the pyramid to use, but should be popularized so that everyone can use it, the same is true for AI, it's very gratifying to see that not only the last year's winning team for the I'm glad to see that not only last year's winning team, but also this year's research on some assistive devices for stuttering has seen a lot.
If you look at it from all angles, Microsoft has been fortunate to build a platform over the past 15 years that has provided great tools to follow the growth of very diligent students in China, so it's great to see that some of the things they've published, although not immediately commercially available, have come up with innovative ideas in the process of being exposed to cutting-edge technology, reflecting current technology and the needs of human beings on the surface of the planet. We think it's great.
Technology change is really accelerating, and for Microsoft, the Innovation Cup competition to determine the winners is not the ultimate goal, when there are good ideas of great value, Microsoft's approach is to make these projects further improved through the gas pedal, and to connect these student creators and investors, so that their ideas can be productized. In the interview Shen also mentioned that Microsoft prefers to connect students with resources rather than acquisitions, and that after setting up the Microsoft Accelerator (Beijing and Shanghai in China) in 2012, Microsoft has pushed 140 different projects to fruition, many of which have gone on to become companies in the industry that are realizing what they set out to do in the first place.