On 14 November, the organising committee of the microcontroller application design competition announced that the final round and awards ceremony of the MCU (microcontroller) Application Design Competition in Vietnam, among the nine strongest teams representing 149 teams from colleges and universities across the country, organised by Texas Instruments (TI) – the world's leading semiconductor electronics and digital signal processing technology company – at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, had ended.
Da Nang University of Science and Technology with its multifunctional assistive project for people with disabilities.
This year's champion was the Three Idiots team from Da Nang University of Science and Technology, with a multifunctional assistive system project for people with disabilities, introducing a new range of wheelchairs to help people with disabilities and patients move around on their own without assistance. Second and third prizes went to the PIF – TOT and MRE – CTU teams, from Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Can Tho University of Technology respectively.
According to the organisers, using TI's MSP430 or Tiva ARM Cortex-M4F as the main processor, participating teams could freely program creative functions for their desired electronic device on a sample MCU board, or design their own hardware and software. Besides the chance to apply their expertise in practice, practise presenting in English and defend their projects in question-and-answer sessions with the judges, the winning teams will receive TI prizes worth a total of up to 10,000 USD, as well as Sunflower Mission's Engineering & Technology scholarships.
Specifically, the new wheelchair, which can move automatically as the Three Idiots team wishes, won over the judges and the audience by combining all three elements of creativity – technology – usefulness, promising practical benefits for the health and healthcare sector as well as helping to bring a better life to people who have difficulty moving around (people with disabilities, patients), enabling them to move independently without any other help. The system on the wheelchair is also programmed to automatically send a signal to relatives when the person in the wheelchair has an accident. Users only need head movements (tilting left or right, leaning the head forwards or backwards, etc.) to control the wheelchair.
Also exploring the theme of interaction between people and robots, the PIF – TOT team, with a sensor system designed to understand and respond to users' movements, has wide applications in fields such as healthcare, entertainment and offices, and won second prize. The MRE-CTU team from Can Tho University of Technology won third prize with a project designing a payment system for public services using RFID and NFC technology, already familiar in developed countries, such as EZ Link in Singapore and Octopus in Hong Kong. The card payment project has prospects for application in schools, offices and public transport, as well as expanding into a tool to support urban management.
Following the success of the two competitions held in 2011 and 2012, the third TI MCU Design Competition in Vietnam was held from March to November 2013, attracting 149 teams of 447 students from universities and colleges across the country, up nearly 30% on the previous year's entries.
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