Recently, the students from the University of Science and Technology, a University of Da Nang (UD) member school, won the award of the contest ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship Challenge’ (IEC) 2023 with many highly applicable products.

The Goldstein Birds team won the Best Female Students- Led Team award.

This contest was held in Ho Chi Minh City within the framework of the USAID BUILD-IT Dow STEM programme, thereby summarising achievements after 5 months of participating in the IEC programme by nearly 200 students and 20 lecturers from universities in the field of engineering in provinces and cities nationwide such as Ha Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Can Tho and Tra Vinh.

The competition connects talented students from leading engineering and technology universities in Viet Nam to create solutions and initiatives for challenges in real business, social and environmental problems.

After nearly 6 months of working from the time of ideation, design, implementation of my idea with the use of waste products from bagasse and rice husk processed to make artificial boards instead of using wooden boards, the Goldstein Birds group consisting of students from class 21SH1, majoring in biotechnology and chemistry, from the Da Nang University of Technology have made great efforts to overcome difficulties and challenges to create the desired product.

Goldstein Birds team leader Huynh Mai Thi said: “We realised that bagasse and beer residue in Viet Nam can be used as potential raw materials to create green materials. However, most of them are not used or handled in an ineffective way. Faced with those realities, our team came up with the idea of using bagasse and beer waste to develop new green materials to replace natural wood”.

The purpose of this proposal is to create an artificial board that is recycled from bagasse and rice husk as an alternative to natural products. Besides, the group replaces the traditional formaldehyde glue which emits harmful gases to the environment with a bio-adhesive that is safe for health and completely environmentally friendly. And finally, the product will meet the standards of technique, quality, reasonable price, environmental friendliness and safety for health.

During the project, the team encountered difficulties, for instance finding materials. The use of machines, performing heavy work to make products is also one of the big obstacles facing the team. However, the students still try to overcome to complete their product. The Goldstein Birds team won the Best Female Students-Led Team award for their project to create an artificial board product that is recycled from bagasse and can replace natural products.

As for the BKM - AL team, they participated in the competition with the project of building a robot that applies artificial intelligence (AI) in human resource management in a friendly and secure way, the system can help identify acquaintances and strangers quickly, as well as in the case of wearing masks or glasses, thereby helping limit the situation of impersonating at check-in and check-out points. This entry won the third prize in the contest,

As revealed by Nguyen Thanh Trung, the team leader, the idea started from the real demand for managing personnel and avoiding losing equipment in the laboratory of the BK-Maker Scientific Research Club.

The team has started researching IoT devices that use magnetic cards to be able to manage personnel as well as equipment in the club's Lab. However, during the experimental implementation, there were many problems such as many members forgetting their magnetic cards as well as being unable to control the status of people entering the club room.

So, club members built a facial recognition algorithm on a high-compact edge device. During the experimental implementation, the team received feedback from club members and from there wished it could interact with people more.

According to Trung, the superiority and uniqueness is that you have built a complete human resource management AI system with a friendly-looking receptionist robot, integrating voice and gesture technologies to interact with users. This will be one of the first and advanced check-in systems in Da Nang.

Simultaneously integrating many AI models together, the easy-to-use AI models have high accuracy, especially the face recognition model with more than 98% accuracy, using the best and highly secure data storage services available today, building a website to monitor and managing intuitive,

Trung said, next time, the team members will implement the installation at application addresses such as laboratories, classrooms, academic clubs at the Da Nang University of Science and Technology, and companies in Da Nang. Simultaneously, they continuously update new AI models and research to improve speed and accuracy

The built-in system will receive data on the face, name and ID of the person authorized to enter the entrance. When people approach the robot, by machine learning algorithms and deep learning in the field of AI, it starts to check, scan the person approaching and check the information in the database. The robot will announce whether the person's check is already in the data set. In the event of a successful check, the person's information will be updated on the website.

The website will visualise information and interact with those who are in need and users can easily access and let managers manage. Managers can analyze the data and use it for many purposes such as security, tracking and attendance.

The team has created a robot that, in addition to facial recognition, can also interact with users. In the future, the team wants to develop more mobility features and virtual assistant features to be able to interact directly with people in a smarter way.

Reporting by BAO VAN - Translating by A.THU