Media

An HKU Engineering team, comprising three BEng (Computer Engineering) students Lam Wun Yin Will, Kwok Ching Fung Daniel and Teoh Jian Ning Alex, won a First Prize Award at the “2018 China Collegiate Computing Contest – 3rd Mobile Application Innovation Contest” co-organised by Zhejiang University and Apple Inc.

Their award-winning innovative design “Air Guitar” is a motion-activated iOS app for guitar beginners or people who want to play guitar but are bound by the environment. The app enables them to play guitar and experience music anytime and anywhere, with their iPhone. The app can detect the motions and the gestures of the player, transform the actions into guitar chords, so as to mimic the experience of playing a guitar. Users can also record the chords and the songs they play via the Air Guitar app. The Team has been invited by Apple Inc to join the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Another HKU team, comprising two BEng (Computer Engineering) students Wong Chi Ping Desmond and Wong Kwong Yat Felix and one BEng (Computer Science) student Yeung Tsz Lok, won a Second Prize Award with the app “Luminosite”, which uses navigation and AI obstacle detection technology to provide surrounding information to people who are visually impaired.

They are the first Hong Kong teams to win top prizes at the competition.

The Mobile Application Innovation Contest is part of the China Collegiate Computing Contest (C4). It attracted over 800 teams from colleges and universities in the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau to take part. Four teams shortlisted from Hong Kong represented the territory to take part in the compeition, among them two were from HKU. After the first and second rounds of the competition, 56 apps were selected from the 591 works submitted for the final round of the contest which took place at Zhejiang University on September 17, 2018. Selected teams were invited to showcase their apps to the public and to give a presentation.

Organised by the Advisory Committee of Computing for Higher Education of Ministry of Education of the PRC, the Advisory Committee of Software Engineering for Higher Education of Ministry of Education of PRC, the Advisory Committee of University Computing Programme for Higher Education of Ministry of Education of PRC and China National Society of Computing Studies for Higher Education, the China Collegiate Computing Contest is a technology-based competition for students in various professional disciplines of higher education in China.

Media enquiries:
Ms Celia Lee, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 8519; Email: celia.lee@hku.hk) or
Miss Bonnie Tsang, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 1924; Email: bonniepy@hku.hk)