Co-organised by Institute for Entrepreneurship of PolyU, City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP), Hong Kong Techathon 2018 was held at InnoCentre on 5 – 7 January. PolyU student team consisted of 2 COMP students and 1 EIE student won the Hong Kong Techathon with their project, Sense+. Being one of the 13 winning teams, they were awarded with a direct entry to PolyU Micro Fund Scheme 2018 Final Assessment for a Seed Fund up to HK$120,000 and a conditional offer to HKSTP Incubation Programme.
Two pre-Techathon workshops were held on 25 November and 2 December last year, enabling participants to meet entrepreneurs, team up with like-minded people and understand the latest technologies. During the 2-day competition, each team built prototypes and demonstrated their projects on one of the four themes including Education/ Social Technology, Fintech, Healthcare Technology and Internet of Things.
“Sense+” stands for “See, Explore, Notice and Search with Ears”. It is a Computer Vision application with comprehensive online information for the visually impaired. Equipped with machine-learning based computer vision technology, it could describe scenes, recognise faces, identify banknotes and read out text or books.
Hong Kong Techathon provides a great platform for programmers, engineers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs to work collaboratively over a weekend and come up with ideas, prototypes.