For its fourth edition, Dell Technologies challenged students from Singapore\u2019s various Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), namely its polytechnics and autonomous universities, to build AI and cloud-native tools that help Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PWIDs) and Persons with Disabilities (PWDs)\u00a0live more independently as part of Dell InnovateFest 2026.<\/p>\n
While Dell supplied the AI infrastructure for InnovateFest 2026, the problems came from the recipients of MINDS<\/b> (formerly known as Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore) and SPD<\/b> (formerly known as the Society for the Physically Disabled), with the students going into people\u2019s homes to find out how they could help before they wrote any code.<\/p>\n
The 52 finalists were selected from thousands of students across 10 institutions, then spent six weeks visiting care facilities, speaking with beneficiaries and testing ideas with real users before presenting their prototypes at the grand finals at National Gallery Singapore on 18 September.<\/p>\n Dell Technologies Singapore Vice President and Managing Director Andy Sim.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n That process was the whole point, according to Dell Technologies Singapore Vice President and Managing Director Andy Sim.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents were not solving hypothetical problems,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are building for real people with real needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Sim went further on who owns the results. The people who shared their experiences and tested early prototypes were, he told the room, \u201cnot just beneficiaries of these solutions, but the co-creators of them.\u201d He added: \u201cYou reminded us that the best innovations are created with people, not merely for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The winning polytechnic team from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n On the polytechnic track, Ngee Ann Polytechnic<\/b> achieved success with InSync, a personalised voice and AI-supported communication facilitator built around a tablet.<\/p>\n The options allowed the PWIDs to create a \u201cvoice\u201d of their own.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The device helps a PWID handle the communication problems they run into day-to-day. Where a user isn\u2019t comfortable with a generic device voice, InSync can synthesise one to speak on their behalf, converting text to speech and carrying emotion with it across four registers: happy, frustrated, angry and calm.<\/p>\n The camera module can be used to identify the user\u2019s surroundings.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n It answers one of the two challenges set this year, which Guest-of-Honour Edwin Tong, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs, summarised as helping \u201cpersons with communication difficulties express themselves better and recover when conversations break down.\u201d<\/p>\n The tablet can be used by the PWID to start conversations, ask questions, and even order for them.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Recovering when a conversation breaks down is one problem, starting a conversation is another, and getting back on track after a conversation derails mid-sentence is yet another, and it\u2019s where most general-purpose assistive tools stop being useful. These are issues that InSync is meant to resolve.<\/p>\n The team received S$10,000.<\/p>\n The winning team from The National University of Singapore.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The National University of Singapore won the university track with PotPal, a healthy-eating diet companion.<\/p>\n Simply take a picture using a snmartphone and submit it to the app to start playing.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The app takes a photo from a smartphone and returns a calorie count alongside a read on how healthy the meal is. It\u2019s gamified, awarding points that users redeem for prizes, and the team said their goal is to get it into the Government\u2019s Healthy 365 app, which already uses points and rewards to get Singaporeans tracking steps, logging meals and joining fitness programmes.<\/p>\n It can show you how close you are to your daily intake of greens and grains.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n That puts PotPal on the other side of this year\u2019s brief, in what Tong described as helping persons with intellectual disabilities and ordinary people \u201cplan activities, make healthier choices, navigate everyday obstacles.\u201d Independent living is mostly an accumulation of small daily decisions, and food is among the most frequent.<\/p>\n This team also received S$10,000.<\/p>\n Edwin Tong, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs.<\/p>\n image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Despite tackling different problems, both projects were built around the same idea of helping users do more for themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cThese solutions are not designed to make decisions for persons with disabilities,\u201d Minister Tong said. \u201cThey are designed to give individuals greater agency.\u201d<\/p>\n Here, the point was not to automate more tasks, but to help users handle more of those tasks on their own.<\/p>\n A solution to help PWIDs with appointments and events.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n MINDS chief executive Kelvin Koh said the charity got more out of the arrangement than it expected. \u201cWhat we did not anticipate was how much our own community would gain from the experience, the conversations, the prototypes, the sense that young people are investing their talents in solving these challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n SPD chief executive Abhimanyau Pal made a similar point about method. \u201cThis human-centred approach is key to transforming promising ideas into practical solutions that make a meaningful difference in everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n This can help PWIDs plan events and even buy what is needed.<\/p>\n Image: HWZ<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The students got something out of it too, and Andy Sim was unusually direct about what.<\/p>\n Tay Jeung Hong competed in last year\u2019s edition. His technical curiosity and problem-solving approach caught Dell\u2019s attention, and the company hired him into its APJ AI Innovation Hub. This year he returned as a mentor, working alongside 2023 champion Ryan Sim on physical AI projects.<\/p>\n Andy Sim spelt out what that meant for the room. \u201cSo, to all the students here, you are definitely a potential hire. If you do well, you get hired. Dell InnovateFest is not just a competition, it is a talent pipeline, and today I dare say it is a community.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 2023, the APJ AI Innovation Hub has put more than 11,000 students<\/b> and working professionals<\/b> through AI and cloud-native training. Other past finalists have taken internships and full-time roles at Dell and across its partner ecosystem.<\/p>\n Minister Tong\u2019s substantive argument challenged both the students and the way Singapore frames its AI ambition.<\/p>\n \u201cOur ambition should not simply be to adopt more technology, or to build the most sophisticated or cutting-edge AI system for the sake of doing so. But instead, we should ask ourselves: what can we master the technology to do for us? Who benefits from the new innovations?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He pushed the students to use AI \u201cnot simply to demonstrate what AI can do, but to ask what AI should do to improve people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n On why that suits Singapore, he made the small-country case, in that a country with no large domestic market, no natural resources, needs to competes on people and talent. \u201cThat\u2019s Singapore\u2019s secret strength, and that same approach must guide us in the use of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Dell nor the charities committed to taking InSync or PotPal further, with both projects still needing testing and refinement. PotPal, for example, hopes to further develop its app with Healthy 365\u2019s help.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Minister made that point himself, telling the students that some ideas would evolve, some would change shape, and some would need more feedback before they were ready.<\/p>\n For now, InnovateFest matters less for whether these prototypes become products and more for how they were built.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For its fourth edition, Dell Technologies challenged students from Singapore\u2019s various Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), namely its polytechnics and autonomous universities, to build AI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[4180,1279,30498,2007],"class_list":["post-87302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-dell","tag-independent","tag-innovatefest","tag-living","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Polytechnic winner InSync tackles communication breakdowns<\/h2>\n
University winner PotPal focuses on healthier choices<\/h2>\n
The principle both winners share<\/h2>\n
What MINDS and SPD got out of it<\/h2>\n
The talent pipeline, stated plainly<\/h2>\n
Ask what AI should do<\/h2>\n
What happens to the projects now<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n