As part of the 12th Peking University International Cultural Festival and Global Youth Innovation Festival, the 2015 International Contest of Innovation China Final was held in Beijing from October 19 to 20.
University students from across the nation brought with them innovations to participate in one of the various fields of the contest such as smart home, smart transportation, health care.
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Can 2015 officially kicked off last March with preliminary contests being held all over the country. Tens of thousands of enthusiastic youth from every province and city entered. After passing the contest’s strict standards, a final list of about 500 teams comprising 2000 young students were selected to participate in the final contest in Beijing.
Now in its 9th year, the iCan Contest is a platform for young talents to hone their skills in the field of science and technology, as well as to show off their latest innovations. With its principle of “Passing on the iCan spirit, spurring enthusiasm for creativity, igniting dreams of innovation”, every participant did not disappoint judges and thoroughly delivered the iCan spirit.
On the morning of the competition, crowds of college students entered the auditorium with their inventions in hand. Among them was a multi-functional robot capable of voice interaction, projecting videos and images, and not to mention dancing. This so-called “teaching robot” was born from the dream of providing children in kindergarten and elementary schools with education of improved quality.
Another attractive robot was the walking robot. This meter high robot can not only walk steadily on its two “feet”, it can also give speeches, play football, and dance, which brought it with great applause.
The judge panel consisted of 50 judges, mostly entrepreneurs, businessmen, and investors with a keen eye on science and innovation.
In the grand final, the united team of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Peking University, the National Defense Science and Technology University team, and the Northwestern Polytechnic University team as well as two others all won Grand Prize for their Wipace Smart Shoes, iMuscle Sports Wear and iBag, respectively.
The First Place prize was awarded to the Automatic Threading Machine, the Metamorphic Robot, the Intelligent Two-way Sign Language Translation System and 34 other works.
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n the junior division, the Electric Shopping Cart for the Elderly, Vehicle Traffic Surveyor and Intelligent Traffic Light Design both bagged the Grand Prize.
The winners of this year’s competition will head to Paris next year to participate in the grand final of the International iCan Contest. The event is set to be held from July 6 to 8, 2016.
The International Contest of Innovation was initiated in China in 2007 to give a national platform for creative university students to express their innovative ideas. Later it created a junior division, allowing younger minds to participate. Today it has grown into one of the nation’s most prestigious contests in the field of applied science and technology. In 2010, iCan officially became an international contest, with more than twenty countries along with more than ten thousand students participating each year.
Written by: Dohun Na
