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"A Dog" Emerged Triumphant in the 7th NTU Innovation Competition

Embarking upon its 7 th year, the NTU "Innovation Competition" held the award presentation ceremony in the Bo-li Hall a few days ago. In addition to the thirty-some teams which made to the semi-finals, the organizing agency also invited Vice President George Tai-Jen Chen, Director of the System on Chips Center Dr. Liang Gee Chen, Director of the Office of R & D Dr. Ji-Wang Chern, Director of the INSIGHT Center Dr. Pei-Ling Liu, and representative from the Epoch Foundation to attend the ceremony. These honored guests applauded the amazing creativity demonstrated by the students who participated in the competition.

Vice President George Tai-jen Chen paid his tribute to the System on Chips Center. He said: "Over the years the System on Chips Center has devoted itself to organizing the NTU Innovation Competition, and has introduced a thriving atmosphere into our campus!!" Director of the Office of R&D Dr. Ji-Wang Chern also offered some encouragement for the students: "The direction of a great research often stems from a small wisdom. All the creative ideas that we see in the innovation competition today may become the starting point of a great invention tomorrow!!"

Eye-Catching and Lucrative

This year's winning team "A Dog" came fully prepared. Upon entering the award presentation ceremony, everyone's attention could not but be caught by a giant puppet dressed up as a dog. Underneath the puppet was Mr. Yin-cheng Chen, a student from the Graduate Institute of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering. He and his classmate Mr. Jia-Hsien Lin won the top prize in this year's Innovation Competition, and joyously took home N.T. 100,000 in cash!!

The product designed by the A Dog Team was named "A Dog Wearable Animal Collar as a Means of Mobile Advertisement". Judging by its nomenclature, this is a proprietary product of advertising. Prior to the invention of such a product, who would have thought that a dog's collar could become a vehicle for advertisement? Professor Pao-I Hwang, one of the judges for the semi-finals commented: " A Dog really sells ads!! It looks very gimmicky, but more importantly, it is highly feasible, and the market effect is very good!!" The gadgets employed in A Dog included GPRS data transfer modules, LED display, LED light-emitting device and GPS modules. The system manager of A Dog could use the GPRS module to transmit the contents of any advertisement to the dog's collar. If this creative idea could become a practical commodity, walking a dog may no longer be a leisure activity for the pet owner, and a tiny dog's collar may create unexpected business opportunities.

Aside from the top prize winner A Dog, the runner-up was a product named "Driving Security System—the Small Eye of the Car", the design principle of which was to install digital cameras on both sides of the car, using fast image recognition algorithms to estimate the time that an object on the driveway takes to move toward the car , thereby minimizing the chance of an accident happening. Whereas the "Real Person Virtual Hair Change System" received unanimous confirmation from the attendants and won the Congeniality Award.

CEO of Taiwan Design Center Mr. Tony K. M. Chang was also invited to attend the award ceremony to share his "Road to Innovation." He said: "The purpose of design is by no means to enhance the added value of a product. Rather, it is the core of the value of a product."

Seven years ago, the System on Chips Center of the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science inaugurated the "System Design Innovation Competition", intended for students of the College. Later on the participants were broadened to include students from the whole university, and the name of the competition was officially changed to "NTU Innovation Competition."

Director of the System on Chips Center Dr. Liang-Gee Chen hopes that with the joint effort of the Center and the University, in the future the scope of the competition can be expanded to include students from other universities, so that the best creative talents of Taiwan can make use of this competition to stir up their imagination.

Chinese version