AUT’s Team Sustainable Systems, consisting of Teoh, Balamurugan
Venkatachalam, Julio Ferreira, Akash Polra and Andrew Ensor as an
academic mentor, came a long way. With the strategy of uniting the best
minds from the Engineering, I.T. and Business schools of the
university, the team were fighting for the chance to represent New
Zealand at the Microsoft Imagine World Cup Finals in Paris.
The team formed 1 month before the actual preliminary rounds of the
competition. The call to create an innovative product that would
‘Empower users to better sustain the environment while creating
positive values for them’ became the challenge for the competing
universities. The team challenge was aligned with the competition’s
theme this year, ‘Imagine a world where technology enables a
sustainable environment.’
Coming fresh off drawing boards in AUT’s library, the team went
straight into the development of the project. Equipments were being
imported from overseas, from as far away as Canada in order to build a
high quality and performing prototype for the competition.
‘Imagine a world where consumers are empowered to control their
electrical devices via text messaging from their mobile phones, at
anywhere and at anytime.’
‘Imagine a world where your electrical devices tell you that you
are wasting energy, and you can use your mobile phone to switch off
your electrical appliances anywhere, thus saving you money.’
Those two phrases were the sales propositions presented by AUT’s
Team Sustainable Systems. With a completed prototype ready to be
exhibited to the judges, coupled with sleek presentations, the team
advanced through the preliminary rounds - making a leap towards the
Final 4.
AUT out-lasted 12 other participating institutions to emerge as
Finalists in the Nationals, pitting themselves against 3 other
universities, equally desiring the title as Imagine Cup National
Champions.
“During the Open Product Showcase, in which Microsoft New Zealand
opened the exhibition hall for the public to view the Top 4 Innovations
of the Country, we received the loudest cheers and support from the
crowd – there was speculation that AUT’s product was the most
innovative among the 3 other competing projects,” added Michael Teoh.
AUT’s Team Sustainable Systems emerged as the 1st Runner-Up in the
National Finals, missing out narrowly to the winning team from the
University of Canterbury that would represent the country in France.
The AUT team walked away somewhat happy with their prizes from
Microsoft, including an Xbox 360 for each of the members.
Even though the team may not have secured their dreams of
introducing their innovation on an international stage, one of the
judges stated that AUT’s project was the ‘most complete one’ among all
the projects, and that the team should commercialise the project as
soon as possible.
Victory may not have been AUT’s this year, however with the strong
support from the judges and governmental bodies who have shown interest
towards the project, has sparked
new opportunities for Team Sustainable Systems to explore.
“We plan to incubate and commercialise our working solution in the
near future. This is not a competition by itself. We have discovered
something more important. The importance of creating a solution that
empowers mankind to best manage our environment, and also
save some money from it as well,” concluded Michael Teoh.
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