App Pupils. Bulacan State University’s Rexcel Balatbat, lead student of the Smart Phone Guard project that won the first prize, explains features of the application to Mon Isberto, Smart and PLDT public affairs head. Smart Phone Guard can track a stolen phone or remotely disable it or erase its content. (Photo courtesy of Smart/Leon Kilat)
Students from Ateneo de Davao developed the Vehicle Emergency Locator (VEL) that sends an alert message to a cellphone when a car’s airbag is used during accidents. The program can also send out a phone message that tells the GPS location the car.
Launched in August 2004, the SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards aims to give budding engineering students an opportunity to shine by recognizing their technology know-how and ingenuity, says Rolando G. Pea, SMARTs network services division head.
Click here to read Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments’s blog entry on the awards and the winning apps.
Below is Smart’s press release on the project:
3rd SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards
STUDENTS DEMO SAFETY THROUGH CONNECTIVITY WIRELESS APPS
Worried about your safety while on the road? Concerned about the rising incidence of cell phone theft? Terrified with the thought that burglars might break into your house anytime of the day?
Engineering students from the countrys top colleges and universities are poised to save the day with innovative wireless applications that take advantage of technologys great potential in addressing various security concerns.
With the theme Safety through Connectivity in mind, a total of 58 mobile solutions were submitted as entries to the 3rd SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards. Working models of the top 10 most innovative wireless applications will be showcased at the SM Mall of Asia Music Hall on March 9 and 10.
The SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards is the annual inter-collegiate competition organized by Smart Communications Inc. (SMART) as part of the companys Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP), an industry-academe partnership program that helps raise the level of technology and engineering education, particularly in the field of Electronic and Communication Engineering.
Participating student-faculty teams from SWEEP partner schools had to develop wireless applications that will benefit their communities through secure and reliable machine-to-machine communication systems. These must be of uniquely outstanding concept, approach and methodology.
It becomes challenging every year, because the students have to think of fresh ideas and not merely revise or enhance something that is existing or has been presented in previous SWEEP awards, says Eduardo L. Nolasco, Jr., Computer Engineering Department Head of Bulacan State University which has three entries in the finals this year.
These include an intelligent SMS car security system, a GSM-based early natural disaster warning and prevention system, a remote applications and control equipment that works on GSM-AC lines, and a simcard interface security access for doors and lockers.
Also moving up to compete for the plum prizes are a surveillance system accessible through 3G-enabled mobile phones, a vehicle emergency locator, a road assistance system the provides information on safety and traffic situations, and a software application that locks and unlocks apparatus by sending a signal to a controller through GPRS connection.
Completing the roster of this years finalists are an SMS-based home security system that automatically activates the alarm and notifies the proper authorities of a robbery attempt, and a phoneGuard that can protect messages and private files and even track the number and location of a phone thief or the recipient of a stolen cell phone.
