My mother once told me that inventors were sent down by a higher power to advance the progress of humanity. I think I might be one of them.
I've always loved creating new things, so in high school, I challenged myself to enter product-building competitions.
AI FOR GOOD
AI For Good Vietnam is a nationwide school-student competition that challenges students to design AI-based solutions to social and environmental problems.
When I worked on my research papers, I had the idea for a video game that would help people with mental disabilities express their emotions and speak up in social situations.
Later, I pitched my idea to my teammates and they thought it was briliant, so we challenged ourselves to integrate AI into the game. Then, Emotiquest was born.
The game goes like this: the player will control a baby who grows up and go through different social situations. In those situations, the player will speak out loud their responses and make actual facial expressions, while the AI will generate responses for the in-game characters.
In the end, our team reached the semi-final, and I learned so many new things.
IIT Expo
The IIT Expo (ITE) is an international innovation competition and trade expo held in London where inventors and researchers from around the world showcase their inventions, competing for the “Invention & Innovation Award.”
For this competition, I teamed up with two of my friends from elementary school. We created a low-cost two-wheel robot that uses an ultrasonic sensor on a servo to scan a room, build a 2D map, and assist visually impaired people in navigating indoor spaces.
In preparation for the presentation, we had late night calls on zoom, rehearsing over and over. I was so nervous when it was my part of the presentation, I could feel the judges' stare through the screen. Thankfully, we ended up with a gold medal.
Building this robot from scratch was certainly hard work, but I loved our sunday-morning meetings in the cafe and our 10km trips to factories.
BLUE OCEAN
The Blue Ocean Competition is a global virtual pitch challenge for high school students to develop and present “blue ocean” business ideas—innovative solutions that create new, uncontested market space.
I joined this competition with two brilliant classmates who were business majors. We came up with the product "Huskase," which was phone cases made from rice husks, an agricultural waste.
I still remember the day we shot our pitch video on an artificial beach and it rained, so I had to wrap my jacket around the camera so we don't lose our video. Fun times.
