By SIM PEI XUAN
With the vision of enhancing road safety, Team Little Hunter from Taylor’s University created the Traquer app to empower public transport users with a voice to ensure their own safety on the road. Little did they know that eight months later, they would emerge as the first runner-up in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2015 national finals.
It all started out when Traquer CEO and Founder Ting Shi Jin, 19, planned for a vacation to Penang with his friends by bus, but encountered disagreement from their parents due to safety concerns of the public transport. After some persuasion, they eventually made it for the trip, but with sacrifices whereby everyone took turns to keep an eye on the bus driver’s behaviour as their parents remained worried throughout the entire journey.
“I realised that public transport safety is a highly concerned issue among local citizens, and I thought, I could probably use technology to improve this situation,” Shi Jin said.
With the initiative of learning how to develop the application of his dreams, he teamed up with his brother, Ting Shi Chuan, 20, and a friend who could design the application interface, Janice Chau Sian Lu, 20, to create the Traquer app.
“Our focus of this application is to solve the problem of road accidents. By taking a proactive action – which has never been done before – we help empower consumers to take care of their own safety when using public transport,” the software developer in the team, Shi Chuan said.
He explained that the idea of the application was to gather the voice of public transporters through crowdsourcing, allowing people to give opinions and provide ratings for the buses on the road.
With the vision of enhancing road safety, Team Little Hunter from Taylor’s University created the Traquer app to empower public transport users with a voice to ensure their own safety on the road. Little did they know that eight months later, they would emerge as the first runner-up in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2015 national finals.
It all started out when Traquer CEO and Founder Ting Shi Jin, 19, planned for a vacation to Penang with his friends by bus, but encountered disagreement from their parents due to safety concerns of the public transport. After some persuasion, they eventually made it for the trip, but with sacrifices whereby everyone took turns to keep an eye on the bus driver’s behaviour as their parents remained worried throughout the entire journey.
“I realised that public transport safety is a highly concerned issue among local citizens, and I thought, I could probably use technology to improve this situation,” Shi Jin said.
With the initiative of learning how to develop the application of his dreams, he teamed up with his brother, Ting Shi Chuan, 20, and a friend who could design the application interface, Janice Chau Sian Lu, 20, to create the Traquer app.
“Our focus of this application is to solve the problem of road accidents. By taking a proactive action – which has never been done before – we help empower consumers to take care of their own safety when using public transport,” the software developer in the team, Shi Chuan said.
He explained that the idea of the application was to gather the voice of public transporters through crowdsourcing, allowing people to give opinions and provide ratings for the buses on the road.
However, the team’s initial idea required a practical solution, whereby a tracking device had to be installed within every bus in order to monitor the speed of the vehicle, and this was an impossible feat without a hardware developer. That was when Ahmad Shahid Nassir Rogers, 21, was recruited to join as a member, forming a solid team with strong technical knowledge and business presentation skills, all set to participate in the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2015 competition. |
After submitting their proposal and video, Team Little Hunter got shortlisted as the finalists of the global student technology competition, and had the opportunity to join a three-day bootcamp at the national finals. The team had to go through three pitching sessions, of which the judges would provide feedback and the team had to make changes to their presentation for each session.
“During our first pitch, the judges were really impressed. However during our second pitch, they critiqued the entire idea, commenting that it had no business value,” Shi Chuan said.
“Hence throughout the competition, we continuously pivoted the idea to adapt to their requirements. We started off with a simple idea, but by the end of the competition, we had expanded our final solution and created Eyetraq,” Shi Jin added.
Eyetraq is a bus fleet management system catered to bus companies, allowing the management to monitor its buses and drivers, while keeping track of vehicle maintenance and road tax. Gamification is also incorporated into the system, as each bus driver has a performance board with ratings and trophies that serve as personal motivation and encourage healthy competition. With these additional features in the Eyetraq system, Team Little Hunter’s initial idea turned into a business model for bus companies.
Ahmad Shahid said, “By making sure the bus drivers do not speed, we are actually helping the bus company to save on the consumption of fuel. The system which generates all data into visuals and statistics also helps make processes faster.”
“All this eventually reduces the operational cost of the company, which is our selling point why bus companies should adopt the Eyetraq system,” he commented.
Apart from learning to accept criticism with the right attitude, Team Little Hunter agreed that the toughest aspect of the competition was the time constraint.
“We built the Traquer app within a week, but after obtaining feedback from the judges, we had until the next day to complete the Eyetraq system. We were still working on it 30 minutes before our presentation,” Shi Chuan said.
Nevertheless, the team’s time and effort in the competition was certainly proved worth, as they turned out to be winners of the Cyberview Smart City Challenge as well. The sub-challenge, which ran concurrently with the Imagine Cup, aimed to generate technology ideas that could contribute towards improving an urban city, and Team Little Hunter’s public transport solution was decided as the best project.
Looking at the future, Team Little Hunter believes in taking its dream further to achieve the main vision of preventing public transport accidents on the road, by increasing exposure and usage of the Traquer app, and possibly expanding the system to include taxis as well.
It is no doubt that these Software Engineering students will continue to work as a team to challenge technology and bring about change worth looking forward to in the future.
“During our first pitch, the judges were really impressed. However during our second pitch, they critiqued the entire idea, commenting that it had no business value,” Shi Chuan said.
“Hence throughout the competition, we continuously pivoted the idea to adapt to their requirements. We started off with a simple idea, but by the end of the competition, we had expanded our final solution and created Eyetraq,” Shi Jin added.
Eyetraq is a bus fleet management system catered to bus companies, allowing the management to monitor its buses and drivers, while keeping track of vehicle maintenance and road tax. Gamification is also incorporated into the system, as each bus driver has a performance board with ratings and trophies that serve as personal motivation and encourage healthy competition. With these additional features in the Eyetraq system, Team Little Hunter’s initial idea turned into a business model for bus companies.
Ahmad Shahid said, “By making sure the bus drivers do not speed, we are actually helping the bus company to save on the consumption of fuel. The system which generates all data into visuals and statistics also helps make processes faster.”
“All this eventually reduces the operational cost of the company, which is our selling point why bus companies should adopt the Eyetraq system,” he commented.
Apart from learning to accept criticism with the right attitude, Team Little Hunter agreed that the toughest aspect of the competition was the time constraint.
“We built the Traquer app within a week, but after obtaining feedback from the judges, we had until the next day to complete the Eyetraq system. We were still working on it 30 minutes before our presentation,” Shi Chuan said.
Nevertheless, the team’s time and effort in the competition was certainly proved worth, as they turned out to be winners of the Cyberview Smart City Challenge as well. The sub-challenge, which ran concurrently with the Imagine Cup, aimed to generate technology ideas that could contribute towards improving an urban city, and Team Little Hunter’s public transport solution was decided as the best project.
Looking at the future, Team Little Hunter believes in taking its dream further to achieve the main vision of preventing public transport accidents on the road, by increasing exposure and usage of the Traquer app, and possibly expanding the system to include taxis as well.
It is no doubt that these Software Engineering students will continue to work as a team to challenge technology and bring about change worth looking forward to in the future.