Tuesday, 9 July 2013 00:00
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Mohamed Shehan, Stephan Udumalagala, Amal Gunatilake and Kishore Kumar, the Firebirds team from Informatics Institute of Technology (IIT), which won the local Microsoft Imagine Cup in April this year, set off to St Petersburg, Russia last Sunday to compete in the World Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition.
The makeup of this winning team is not unusual in itself, taking into consideration, the ethnic diversity of Sri Lanka. However, what is worthy of celebration is the unity of our very diversity in the four young men representing four ethno-religious groups who were able to synergise their talents and work closely together in harmony for over five months to produce a winning project that may win international accolades.
Of the Firebirds team, Amal is a Sinhala Buddhist, Stephan a Sinhala Roman Catholic, Kishore a Tamil Hindu and the team leader Shehan is a Muslim. What is unique about them is that they came together in total harmony to achieve a common goal using their expertise in the various areas of IT and commerce, without giving any thought to or even realising their different ethnic or religious origins.
The team who worked closely together for over a period of five months despite their final year work load at IIT said that it was Kishore who laughingly pointed out their different ethno-religious origins on the day they presented their project at the local awards function.
Their project I-Chum, which is Shehan’s invention, is a visual aid for the blind. The team had thought of every aspect of its success with software engineering students Stephan and Amal with Kishore who is a business management student planning the marketing aspects of the project.
The team leader said that I-Chum was the final result of a time-consuming research. “Imagine Cup required its competitors to come up with creations that help society. When thinking along those lines, I realised that there was hardly any software solution for blind people. That was how the application I-Chum came into being. Everyone had the same responsibilities and displayed the same commitment. Everyone in the team was led and driven by the sole objective of making this product a success.”
I-Chum is a combination of many technologies. It has infrared cameras, RGB cameras, microphones and sonar. The idea behind the project was to bring these technologies together as there wasn’t a device in the market that combined all these technologies to create a visual aid for the blind. Basically it captures heat, sound, light and depth and translates them into messages that the blind can understand.
