Taipei Tech student's Yao Nai-jhen (姚乃禎, left), Yu Pei-ning (余珮寧, center) and Huang Yu-man (黃羽蔓, right)/ photo courtesy of Taipei Tech
Taipei, May 10 (CNA) A team from National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech) was awarded earlier this week with the "Best of the Year" title for a design submitted to the 2018 iF Design Talent Award, the school said Thursday.
In a press release, Taipei Tech said its students received not only the certificate for the top award in the global competition but also 1,500 euros (US$1,783) in prize money.
The team comprised four graduate students from the school's Innovation and Design program, who presented a wearable device called AIRescuer that releases a tiny drone capable of sending out signals to rescue units in the event of an emergency, Taipei Tech said.
According to the iF World Design Guide website, the AIRescuer can also record the physiological data of the wearer and has Global Positioning System (GPS) and compass functions.
"The project deals with the topic of saving human lives in extreme conditions," the website says. "It enables the fast location of an endangered person. The product is refined in terms of ideas as well as style."
Judged the Best of the Year project, the AIRescuer was designed by students Huang Yu-man (黃羽蔓), Yu Pei-ning (余珮寧), Yao Nai-jhen (姚乃禎) and Lin Ya-zhu (林雅筑), with Professor Zheng Meng-cong (鄭孟淙) from the university's Department of Industrial Design as their advisor.
Paying tribute to the students' achievement, Zheng said it has become increasingly difficult to win an award at the iF design competition because there are now specific themes, and the jury includes designers, cross-disciplinary experts and scholars.
The themes for this year's awards included "What iF you were responsible for the urban space design at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020?", "What iF your ideas created new services by using drones?" and "What iF your home appliance designs were timeless?"
The submitted projects were judged by a jury from Feb. 27 until March 23.
(By Chen Chi-chung and William Yen)
Enditem/pc