ARM contest stimulates innovation among young engineers

From its March 2015 launch to its close in November 2015, the 3^rd edition of the ARM - ST University Design Contest has attracted more than 800 teams of 2,000 students and teachers from 203 universities across 31 provinces in China. The contest offered three rounds of evaluation - from preliminary to semi-final and final.

Arnaud Julienne, Senior Director, Microcontroller, Memory & Secure MCU Group, Greater China & South Asia, STMicroelectronics, commented: "The response was overwhelming, with more than a 10% increase in participation from the previous years, and the quality of submitted designs was very high. Applications ranged from drones, to robots, smart vehicles and infotainment. Encouraging the innovativeness and capability among these young talents to integrate and apply the latest embedded technologies drives technology innovation and talent enhancement in the region and helps students to successfully integrate smart devices into both innovative and entirely new applications."

The contest entries covered a wide range of applications using sensors, motion control, wireless connectivity, mobile and other products. Twenty-one teams were shortlisted for the two-day final round with finalists who demonstrated their works and answered questions from a panel of judges. These judges comprised executives of ST and ARM, as well as scholars and experts from China Software Industry Embedded Association and top Chinese universities including Peking University, Beijing University of Technology, Zhejiang University and East China Normal University.

The overall champion team of this year's ARM - ST University Design Contest is Lab440 (V1.1), from East China Normal University, who designed a smart text reader based on image-processing techniques. The reader helps senior citizens read instructions printed on medicine containers where the text font size is often quite small. The application uses Contact Image Sensors to read the text and convert it to speech through TTS (Text-To-Speech).

A joint first prize was awarded to Dream Team from Suihua University and Conquer Team from Jinan University, who submitted STM32-based Telepresence Robot using Virtual Reality and a Pulse-Control Simulator, respectively.

"China is set to become a leader in the smart-device industry and IoT deployment, so supporting the development of the Chinese engineering community is vitally important. The ARM - ST University Design Contest gives Chinese university students access to the latest ARM-based ST technologies with teaching and training materials provided by the ARM University Program. This will make students work-ready as they are equipped with industry-standard skills and tools," added Khaled Benkrid, Worldwide University Program Manager, ARM.