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IMAGINE this. Someone in Rio de Janeiro designs a stunning dress. You live in Ipoh and input your vital statistics into a computer. A seamstress near you then sews up that same dress, to fit you perfectly.
This was the student project declared the overall winner at the Microsoft Imagine Cup world championship. The team from Brazil, called eFitFashion, spent three years developing the algorithms that automatically customise the patterns on their online platform called Clothes For Me.
“It’s expensive to get a tailor to make clothes. But we have simplified the process,” said team member Bianca Letti. “You just need to choose a design. Then do a few simple measurements on your body. And any seamstress around the world can sew this up for you. We want to democratise fashion!”
They’ve patented the technology, formed a startup and are now pitching investors on the concept.
“This is obviously going to take off,” said Alex Kipman, the Microsoft technical fellow who was one of the three judges for the last round.
The winner for the Imagine Cup World Citizenship category (projects to help society) was Virtual Dementia Experience, created by a team from Swinburne University, Australia (www.facebook.com/OpaqueMM). I donned the a headset and entered a different world, where the carpet was crawling with “ants”, the floor was slick with “water” and the walls were “fluttering”.
Team member Chris MacKenzie explained: “When we use certain designs of carpets and wall paper, this is what people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s will ‘see’. We hope this will help care givers and interior designers understand their needs better.”
The runner-up in the World Citizenship category has special relevance for Malaysia’s battle with dengue fever. Team Mozter from Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic have created a mosquito monitoring platform leveraging on cloud-based technologies.
Instead of the slow, old method of manually collecting mosquitoes from traps and then analysing them visually in the lab, their method instantly sends data on what species of mosquitoes are entering the traps by recording the wing frequencies of mosquitoes – different species flap their wings at different speeds – with a laser sensor. The data is then sent to health control officers.
“So instead of doing mass fogging, more targeted means of control can be used, based on what mosquitoes are recorded,” explained team member Kirk Yeo.
Each sensing unit costs US$70 (RM285) now and design work is underway to make it water and theft proof.

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