China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Sino-US maker contest flaunts joint creativity
There were innovative ideas aplenty on show at the recent finals of 2018 China-US Young Maker Competition in the capital, Xing Wen reports.
The online food delivery market has flourished in China over recent years, with rushing delivery scooters being an increasingly common sight in lanes and on sidewalks in many parts of the country.
Lan Zhen, 21, a regular user of food-delivery apps found that accidents involving these scooter riders cropped up frequently, mostly as a result of the drivers using their mobile phones on the way to deliver the customers’ takeaway food.
“There are 4 million takeaway riders across the country. It is inevitable for them to use phones on the roads as they have to act fast to pick up lucrative jobs via the apps and contact customers,” says the electronic science major at Xiamen University. “At this point, it could be effective to improve their safety by preventing them from removing their hands from the handlebars and upgrade the traditional earphones that probably isolate them from hearing car horns.”
Then, in July, Lan and her schoolmates designed a set of intelligent safety equipment, named The Guardian, which consisted of a helmet with bone-conduction headphones and a Bluetooth controller on the handlebars.
The work projected Lan’s team to the finals of the 2018 China-US Young Maker Competition, where they secured second place.
The competition was launched by the Ministry of Education of China in 2014 and, this year, attracted more than 6,400 participants from China and the United States, nearly 400 of whom successfully worked their way into the finals, which were held in Beijing earlier this month.
Seventy-five teams competed in the 24-hour hackathon, creating innovative projects that showcased their interdisciplinary skills and ability to solve real-world problems.
Inspiration from reality
Sun Hongbin, the chairman of the judging panel, says the original aspiration for running the competition was to put people first, and that has been embraced by projects like The Guardian which is based on people’s needs.
Another example is an interactive posture-sensing garment, designed by Tongji University’s Liu Fuxin and her team, which demonstrates care for people in need of rehabilitation training.
Because demand has far outstripped supply of professional therapists who can help patients recovering from strokes or provide office workers suffering from shoulder and lower back pains with rehabilitation exercises, Sun’s team created a garment that is capable of supervising the training instead of therapists.
“Compensatory movements like a shrug decrease the training efficiency,” says Sun. “However, the health-friendly clothing can help you avoid posture problems as it assesses your movements using sensors and then the feedback can be seen on an app.”
The 23-year-old, together with her peers, has been preparing for the project for a year, including ascertaining problems and forming a team of people with a diverse range of specialities.
“We performed a survey first to discover users’ specific requirements,” she says.
Similarly, Liu Changgui, a senior from Southwest Jiaotong University was struck by the idea of creating a set of devices for the hearing and vocally impaired to communicate after he met a deaf and mute couple who are vendors at a food market.
Liu went to their stall to buy potatoes and “talked” to them with a pen and paper. They told him the disability was a considerable inconvenience, especially when they consult doctors at the hospital.
“It’s hard for doctors to understand their gestures or wait for them to write down their troubles,” he says. “Then I decided to make a portable interpreter that can recognize sign language and speak it out.”
The audio-visual interpreter, which allows eye contact between the user and other people during communication, ensures an equal status for everyone.
“I hope it can also be installed in such public places as the airport, serving more people with similar afflictions,” Liu says.
Learning by doing
Liu’s team gathered students majoring in materials science, computer science and industrial design. They met one another at a makerspace — a collaborative work space for innovative youngsters — founded by Southwest Jiaotong University in 2013.
“I am do-it-yourself kind of person; I really enjoy getting an idea to work by hand,” says Huang Jintao, one of Liu’s teammates, adding that in the makerspace, he can find partners from other departments to cooperate with.
For Huang, the makerspace is his “second classroom” where he can acquire knowledge that he fails to get from textbooks.
“Most of the time, we create prototypes for fun, rather than gearing up for a competition,” he says. “In my view, it’s super cool to explore and experiment with technology as a team.”
It’s widely accepted that China’s first makerspace was Xinchejian (meaning “new workshop”) established in Shanghai in 2010. After that, maker culture swept the country with more and more maker centers popping up in campuses, industrial zones and science parks.
“At the heart of maker culture is openness and a spirit of sharing,” says Huang Gang, vice-director of Qiming College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. “The maker movement is driving the education of shuangchuang, or double chuang, activities — innovation (chuangxin) and entrepreneurship (chuangye) — in universities, and it’s important to integrate the university faculty into the system of the maker community.”
Alexander Frederick Wulff from Harvard University adds that participating in a maker competition allows him to meet his Chinese counterparts and to learn from one another.
“I’ve been to China once before but I’ve never had the opportunity to have such great dialogue with all the other Chinese finalists and see how the Chinese projects work,” he says. “I was impressed by the scope and quality of the Chinese projects.”
Feasibility matters
Song Weizu, a judge in the competition, says only a quarter of those projects that stood out in the previous finals have been turned into viable products in the market.
The industrial design graduate from Tsinghua University points out the gap between the work of students from China and the US.
“Most of Chinese projects were creative, but lacked completeness, so they usually ended up as concept demos,” Song says. “However, the design of American participants’ works seemed to be more feasible.”
The Clear Water AI, produced by Chinese-American Peter Ma to detect harmful particles and bacteria in water resources, more or less confirms Song’s words.
“I got funding for the project before I entered the finals,” says the 34-year-old who runs five startups in the US.
Ma knows how the market works and keenly attends activities like Maker Faire and World Virtual GovHack to share ideas. The team has already planned out its next steps after the finals.
“We will travel to the United Arab Emirates for three months after the competition,” he says. “The final iteration of the prototype will make its debut this year and then will be first applied in Dubai.”
Jiang Zuocheng, a student from Wenzhou Technician Institute, though failing to place his project in the top 10 of the finals, says he has noticed the shortcomings of his work.
“We should cut down the cost of our prototype to make sure it is affordable for consumers in the future,” Jiang says. “All in all, I need to observe the world before I create something and learn from outside of the classroom.”
“Universities should get the students closer to enterprises and help them understand how to manufacture a product,” Song Weizu says. “A wide range of knowledge, both theoretical and practical, is crucial for young makers.”
At the heart of maker culture is openness and a spirit of sharing.”
Huang Gang, vice-director of Qiming College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology