Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award (TKKYIA) 2010

On 5th June, the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award (TKKYIA) 2010 award presentation ceremony was held in Science Centre Singapore. Miss Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for Ministry of Education and Ministry of National Development) graced the event. Two students from DBME of SEG, Wu Mengjiao and Siti, won the Merit Award in open section. This is the 1st time RP won a prize in the reputable award.

Project Writeup

Multi-modality Two-dimensional Brain Computer Interface Control

Zhang Haihong¹, Wu Mengjiao², Siti Nurhikma Mohamed Said²

Project supervisor:  Dr. Guan Cuntai1,   Dr. Jiang Lijun2

1: Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research

2: Republic Polytechnic

Aim/Objective

The device allows users to navigate a mobile robot in 2D space, through performing 2 mental tasks.

Why the need?

Severely disabled people have little to none interaction capability with the real world. Thus, the brain-controlled robotic device can significantly improve their quality of life, and it also solves the expensive user training problem with existing 2D brain-computer interface technology.

How does it work?

1. Put on and prepare an EEG cap connected to the amplifier;

2. Concentrate on the device to initiate/stop it;

3. Imagining right/left hand movement to steer the robot clock-wise/anti-clock-wise;

4. Defocus attention to move it.

( From left to right: Wu Mengiao(RP) , Siti (RP), Dr. Jiang Lijun(RP) , and Dr. Zhang Haihong(I2R) are prearping TKKYIA final presentation demo on 20th Mar 2010 in Biopolis)

The Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award was first mooted by Nobel Laureate Professor C.N. Yang in May 1986. There are categories that cater to different interests and levels of inventors, namely, the Junior Student section, the Student section, the Senior Student section, the Open section and the Defence Science section. Of all the sections, the Open group is the most challenging one, as it's open to all participants who are under 35 years old, meaning that our students have to compete with Ph.D /Master holders from NUS, NTU, and A*Star, etc.

(more details can be found at http://www.tkkfoundation.org.sg/tkk/foundation/young/invest_eng.shtml)

Below is the structure of the TKK award :

1. Gold ( valid for 2010)
2. Silver (1 -3 teams, no poly won for 2010)
3. Merit (3-6 teams, RP won for 2010)
4. Commendation (3-10 teams)

In view of that: 1) There is no gold award in open group this year; 2) No polytechnic won the silver award, 3) The 2 RP students from SEG won the merit award, we can deem that RP won a award which is equivalent to 2nd prize among all the participants and RP team is one of the best performers among the 5 polytechnics.

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