Auckland Students To Represent NZ In Poland

Auckland Engineering Students To Represent NZ In Poland

A team of University of Auckland engineering students has won a national competition to solve the world’s toughest problems using technology.

Team One Beep, from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, developed a breakthrough technology to send educational data over radio waves to impoverished communities. It won them first place in the Microsoft Imagine Cup New Zealand final held at The University of Auckland Business School on April 30.

“We were all just on top of the world,” says Vinny Jeet from Team One Beep. “The last six months of hard work has paid off. Spending all of our holidays in the lab while the sun shined outside doesn't seem like a waste now! Our aim has always been to win the world finals and we are now a step closer.”

The technology will allow educational materials to be sent via FM/AM frequencies to laptops distributed under the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme. The OLPC charity has donated some 1.4million laptops to poor and remote communities, but a lack of infrastructure, such as broadband or telephone lines in third world countries, makes it nearly impossible to update the materials on the computers.

Team One Beep, made up of final year undergraduates Vinny Jeet, Steve Ward, Kayo Lakadia and Chanyeol Yoo, will travel to Poland to represent New Zealand in the global final in July.

“We wanted to create something that wasn’t reliant on infrastructure, something that just works on its own,” says Kayo. “We believe this a step toward providing universal primary education, helping the one billion of the world’s children living in poverty access knowledge.”

“It can also help educate communities about aids, malaria, or send out civil defence warnings,” Vinny adds. “It saves on paper and transport costs and, unlike mobile technology, is extremely reliable.”

The students have chosen not to profit from the technology. Instead, they will make the software open source so it is available to all. The software would also be made available to governments so content can be developed in native languages.

Three of the four teams to have made the finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup final 2010 were from The University of Auckland. Team Vital Link proposed to use the viral marketing capabilities of Facebook to help artisans in impoverished countries achieve higher sales and prices. Team Enpeda built a prototype to warn drivers when they stray off course and into danger.

The Microsoft Imagine Cup is the world’s largest technology competition. It challenges students with engineering, software or technical backgrounds to develop solutions to the globe’s toughest problems.

“Throughout the competition we’ve seen many great ideas, but Team One Beep’s stood out as the best of the best,” said Scott Wylie, Director of the Developer and Platform Group for Microsoft New Zealand and sponsor of the Imagine Cup. “Their project was the most well-developed, reasoned and emblematic of our theme, based on the U.N. millennium development goals: to solve the world’s toughest problems with technology.”

ENDS

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