Ms Sim Ann (right), presenting an award for the games creation challenge of the National Infocomm Competition.

Youths are “unafraid to dream and think big”, observed Ms Sim Ann, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Information, and Ministry of Education, during the National Infocomm Competition (NIC) and IDA Junior College Computing Awards (JCA) Ceremony 2013 on 28 May.

And indeed, some of the winners at NIC were thinking big – finding ways to transform parking systems, revolutionising the way soldiers are trained to shoot…

NIC is the biggest network of student infocomm competitions in Singapore, with more than 1,500 students participating in nine competitions over the past year.

At the Plugfest.IHL competition organised by IEEE Singapore and Google Developer Group Singapore, a team from Nanyang Polytechnic created PP-Coupon, a parking system that utilises Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to replace parking coupons with smart phones. It also makes use of data analytics to help drivers find parking spaces.

When they have parked their cars, drivers can input the required parking time into their phone. Alerts are sent before the parking expires, and drivers can opt to renew the parking remotely via the app instead of having to return to their vehicles to display more parking coupons. “You’ll never run out of parking coupons,” said Lim Sheng Han. Teammate Lim Ming Kuan pointed out that PP-Coupon was also good for the environment. “Peeling multiple coupons wastes a lot of paper,” he said.

Another revolutionary concept was dreamed up in the Microsoft Imagine Cup. A different team from Nanyang Polytechnic won with the “Kinect Infantry Training System” (KITS), which trains soldiers to shoot properly. With less than a thousand dollars of equipment – mainly a Windows phone, a Kinect sensor and an accelerometer – KITS aims to solve long-standing problems in the training of shooters, such as training gaps caused when instructors change, as well as inconsistent training standards.

“The app interprets whether you’re doing it right regarding posture and how your aim is,” explained team member Joshua Tan. Shooting performance can also be tracked with the app, so trainees can chart their improvement. KITS can also be utilised by commercial shooting ranges, shooting clubs and schools, with a licensing scheme to ensure it stays out of the wrong hands.

The team will be representing Singapore in the Imagine Cup World Wide Finals in Russia this July. In the meantime, said Joshua, “We’re trying to make it more accurate.”

Besides the NIC, the event at the Red Dot Museum also saw 21 students receiving the IDA JC Computing Awards for demonstrating a passion in computing. The award aimed to provide the students with a head-start in the infocomm industry, and also help them gain more industry knowledge through infocomm events, workshops and attachments.

Some award recipients like Ng Yuan Siang and Justin Leow from Dunman High School, were encouraged by their computing teachers to apply for the award. Others, like Anton Chua Zhen Yu, from Hwa Chong Institution, learnt about it online. All, however, were thrilled with what the awards will offer.

“It’s really quite an exciting array of opportunities in front of us,” said Justin. Among the highlights would be the overseas workshops. “It will be really good exposure,” said Yuan Siang.  Anton, whose interest lay in hardware, was looking forward to the overseas stints as well. “I would really, really like to see Intel and AMD,” he said fervently.