Winners of Huawei’s Tech4City 2023 Competition Announced

[Singapore, September 13, 2023] – Returning for its second edition, Huawei has announced the winner of the Tech4City 2023 competition.

Tech4City 2023’s Eight Finalist Teams

Out of the eight finalist teams, Team Mobility from The Institute of Technical Education won the grand prize of S$15,000. Their project aims to make Singapore’s traffic light system inclusive and safer for persons with mobility conditions, while maintaining traffic flow integrity with their AI-powered Mobility Traffic Crossing System. By utilising Huawei Cloud and its ModelArts AI development platform for machine learning training, the team trained the solution to detect in real-time various commonly used mobility aids used by the elderly and PWDs. Through their extensive testing of the AI tool, team Mobility found that their test set results showed great promise – wheelchairs from test images were detected with 83 percent accuracy and mean average precision (mAP) results of 84.9 percent from walking aids.

Team Payment in the Dark from National University of Singapore won the second prize of S$8,000. Their project aims to help visually impaired individuals who face significant challenges with cashless payment methods due to their reliance on visual interface by including voice recognition features. Team Gnomes from National University of Singapore won the third prize of S$5,000. Their project aims to help Singaporeans consolidate their household energy usage in a one-stop platform and reduce their energy consumption.

Team Mobility was also awarded an additional cash prize of S$3,000 with their project, the AI-powered Mobility Traffic Crossing System, as the best innovation in mobility, sponsored by SBS Transit.

Teams that come in fourth to eight positions also received S$1,000 each in cash. In addition to the prize money, the winning team will also be enrolled into Huawei’s flagship CSR programme Seeds for the Future, joining the Huawei Asia Pacific Seeds Tour from 15 September to 19 September 2023 for a tour of Huawei Shenzhen Headquarters tour and talent summit in Shanghai.

The 2023 edition of the Tech4City initiative focused on amalgamating technological breakthroughs with the creation of social impact for a more inclusive and sustainable Singapore within five key areas: Well-being, Learning, Energy, Mobility, and Finance. As Huawei Singapore’s flagship ideation competition, Tech4City aims to empower youths to build the Singapore of tomorrow through technological innovation within the competition’s themes.

Envisioning a better society with technology

In first place was Team Mobility with their Intelligent Traffic Light, an AI-powered Mobility Traffic Crossing System. Recounting their experience in the competition, team leader of Team Mobility, Zamien Ng commented, “We are honoured to win 1st place in the Huawei Tech4City Finals. This competition gave us the opportunity to learn about the future of ICT technologies and push beyond our abilities in designing a safer place for the different communities in Singapore.”

First announced in March, this year’s competition saw over 370 participants forming 144 teams with 89 submitted proposals to address the themes of Well-being, Learning, Energy, Mobility and Finance. In the shortlisting phase, proposals were assessed based on the depth of research, innovativeness and feasibility, social value, use of technology, and logical implementation of each idea.

In recognition of Tech4City’s unwavering commitment to technological innovation in building the Singapore of tomorrow, Huawei is also pleased to share that Tech4City is partially supported by the Digital for Life (DfL) fund, a flagship fund under the Digital for Life movement. The DfL Fund aims to support ground-up projects that help Singaporeans embrace digital and enrich lives through improving digital access, literacy, and wellness.

Ms Low Yen Ling, Minister of State, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth & Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore was the Guest of honour and gave her speech.

“It is truly an honour to witness the great, bold and innovative ideas that our youth have come up with at the Tech4City finals,” said Mr Jeffrey Sim, Group CEO of SBS Transit. “Our youth are our future and it is imperative that they get involved in building our tomorrow. From what I’ve seen today, I'm thrilled and filled with immense hope knowing that our future is in good hands. My heartiest congratulations to the winners and all teams involved in the competition.” SBS Transit has also sponsored the Mobility Award to the team with the most innovative Mobility idea.

Commenting on the 2023 edition of the Tech4City competition, Ms Vicky Zhang, Vice President of Corporate Communications, Huawei said: “Our Tech4City initiative first and foremost allows our youth to take ownership and envision a more liveable and sustainable Singapore of tomorrow, and it is heartening to see these great ideas being put forth. We believe that the future belongs to the youth, and I am humbled to see their commitment to developing a better society for all.”

“Tech4City is Huawei’s long-term goal to empower local community and motivate local young innovators to build tailored solutions for a myriad of real-world problems, we are delighted to play a role in creating an avenue for our youths to ideate solutions empowered by digital technology in the attempts to provide answers to tackle Singapore-centric issues with community care in the heart,” said Mr Foo Fang Yong, CEO, Huawei International, “We hope some of today’s fresh ideas can be implemented in real life to help us create a sustainable, inclusive future, we are thankful for the support of our industry partners and let’s contribute together for a more inclusive and forward-looking Singapore growth story.”

Building a vibrant ecosystem for youths with Dialogues on key themes towards building a more liveable and sustainable Singapore

As part of the Tech4City initiative, Huawei also conducted a series of dialogue sessions which saw industry experts, academia, and professionals discuss key issues and share insights surrounding the competition’s five themes. The Dialogues attracted more than 120 people and created opportunities for the youth’s ideas to take flight.

To build a more vibrant ecosystem for youths and enable them to create social impact, the Tech4City Community has expanded its group of partners to include Government agencies Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Health Promotion Board (HPB); Industry partners such as SBS Transit, SGTech, and SingHealth; Knowledge partners including Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, NUS Enterprise, Singapore Management University (SMU), and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD); and Community partners including Business China and GGEF (Global Green Economic Foundation).

Find out more about the competition through this link: https://www.tech4city.sg/