Bachelor of Mechatronics (Honours) Engineering students Wang Wei Ding, Benjy Yeoh Wei Xiang and Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Honours) student Khor Yin Loon from Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science (LKC FES) emerged as the second runner-up winners at the Tech4Good Challenge under the “Well-Being” track on 8 July 2023 at Batu Kawan, Penang.

Supervised by LKC FES academic Ir Dr Danny Ng Wee Kiat, the team “The Powerpuff Boys” walked away with RM1,000 cash prize, medals and certificates of achievement.

Their project titled Object Detection System with Voice Feedback for Blind Assistance, a voice-controlled computer vision-based system with voice feedback, aimed to assist the visually impaired to recognise and locate nearby objects, and capture the surrounding scene.

Speaking about their achievements, the team said, “We joined this innovative competition mainly to gain experience and learn something new. We also wanted to challenge ourselves. We were happy when our team was announced as one of the winning teams because this is our first time participating in such an event, and we managed to walk away with an award. We want to thank our lecturers for all their support. We are glad that our proposal received recognition from the judges. That gave us a lot of confidence to continue our research.”

Tech4Good Challenge, organised by Vitrox Technologies Sdn Bhd, Vitrox Academy and UTAR, introduced a total of three track categories, namely “Well-Being”, “Agriculture” and “Sustainability. The challenge aimed to provide a platform for secondary school and tertiary-level students to showcase their creative and innovative engineering design processes and solutions.