On a Roll: Irish Team Wins Tech4Good Competition with Wheelchair Access Solution

Huawei announced the winners of the second Tech4Good Competition on January 5, 2022.

Meet Síolta team, Ireland

The Irish team Síolta won first prize for their solution Roll On, a solution designed to enable wheelchair users to independently board trains by deploying a boarding ramp. Powered by computer vision, AI, infrared sensors, and cloud networked by 5G, the solution can be operated by smartphone.

DYK?

• As of December 2021, 41% of UK train stations lacked step-free access – vastly limiting the travel options for wheelchair users living locally.
• An estimated 131.8 million people (or 1.85% of the global population) require a wheelchair.

What is Tech4Good?

The competition is designed to help young adults explore how digital technologies can address common social and environmental issues with commercially viable solutions.

It aims to:

• Raise students’ awareness of challenges to local sustainable development.
• Encourage them to use the ICT skills they learn to explore solutions that are both technically and commercially viable.
• Help students turn innovations into reality.

Huawei’ s flagship CSR program, Seeds For The Future, launched the Tech4Good Global Competition in 2021 as part of its talent development program and foster new ways to harness technological innovation to advance sustainability.

This year’s students leveraged technology with a view to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on the commercial feasibility of their solutions.

The second and third prizes went to

• Algerian team for FarmAI: an early detection system of rust disease in wheat fields using an AI model and drones. The system sends an alert to farmers via a mobile app.
• Italian team for AlarmDeck: a system that tackles alarm fatigue in the intensive care units of Italian hospitals through the use of AI, IoT and cloud computing.

Tech4Good 2022 Stats

• 3,222 students from 110 countries participated
• 300 projects submitted
• An 8-day workshop, Q&A solutions, and 10 one-hour online coaching sessions saw 11 teams from 15 countries reach the final round

“I am very impressed by how the students are using innovative technologies to help elderly people, to solve the flooding problems in urban areas, and to help people with moving disabilities.”

Professor Shahbaz Khan, Director, UNESCO Cluster Office in Beijing and Tech4Good final-round judge

The winning team will have the chance to go on a four-day trip to Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona.

Since 2008, Huawei has invested more than US$150 million through the Seeds for the Future programs to help over 1.54 million people from nearly 150 countries boost their digital skillsets.

Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.