Up until this month, whenever Jon Chung wanted to watch television, he had to adjust the bunny ears first. The junior mechanical engineering major said the only television he owned was about 20 years old, 19 inches wide and operated with antennas.
But thanks to his first-place finish last week in Texas Instruments’ first-ever Vision for Voice contest – in which 250 applicants from around the country submitted ideas for voice technology – Chung will receive a home theater system complete with a 56-inch Samsung high-definition DLP television.
“It’s definitely an upgrade,” Chung said, while taking a quick break from his summer internship to talk about the grand prize.
Chung’s idea, titled “Visualizing the Translation,” was a pair of eyeglasses that interprets foreign languages.
“It’s a pair of glasses that has a receiver in the earpiece that you put in your ear, and somebody will be talking to eye contact with the person.”
Debbie Shemony, a communications director at Texas Instruments, said while part of Vision for Voice’s mission was to spread awareness of Texas Instruments’ voice technology products – “we’re known for calculators,” she said – another facet of the contest was to develop ideas the technology company could eventually patent. While none of the suggested products, such as Chung’s eyeglasses, were actually designed or created by the students, their ideas are vital – and often ingenious, Shemony added.
“[Chung’s] device idea about visualizing translation is something he is going to be looking at to potentially patent with Texas Instruments,” said Shemony, who helped administer a video kiosk to attract applicants in the Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building on April 30, where students then made videos of themselves to submit to the competition.
The 250 total video applications – 40 of which were from students at this university – were narrowed down to 10 finalists, who were chosen based on Internet voting on the contest’s website, Shemony said.
A panel of judges then selected the winner and three runners-up based on creativity, innovation and viability.
Two of the three runners-up happen to be some of Chung’s fellow mechanical engineering majors at the university – Joshua Kusnick, who proposed a voice-activated robot for the disabled and could not be reached for this story, and senior Sidney Ngochi, who came up with an idea for a voice-activated house that allows voice-controlled items, such as air conditioners and microwaves, to start working with a vocal command.
Ngochi, who along with Kusnick received a personal Internet radio player for placing in the contest, said he only found out about Vision for Voice as he was walking out of class in the engineering building and noticed the video kiosk set up to encourage applications.
“It was just freestyle – on the spot,” Ngochi said. “I didn’t even have time to think about it.”
Ngochi went on to express disappointment in getting edged out by Chung.
“I guess it just sucked because we were so close; he won a [56-inch] TV, compared to a $200 radio thing, but it’s still something that I didn’t have before, so I guess I have to be happy with that,” Ngochi said. “I actually expected to win it, but what can you do.”
Chung, who said he learned of the contest via e-mail the day before the video applications were administered, defended the practicality of his translating glasses idea.
“It’d be really useful if you’re overseas and just traveling or part of the army or navy, or even part of the Red Cross,” he said. “It makes it easier to help people.”
And unlike Ngochi’s improvised application, Chung said his proposal was based on actual research he was conducting.
“I presented that idea with a professor, but it wasn’t in our budget to do an idea like that,” Chung said. He added that while the digital processing and the voice activation software required for the glasses would be difficult, the technology does exist to turn his proposal into reality.
For the time being, Chung is focusing his energy on a different project – attempting to repair the Hubble Space Telescope as part of an internship with Alliant Techsystems.
In the fall, he will return to an engineering program that he says proved its superiority through placing three of its students among the top four finalists in the contest.
“It shows how awesome Maryland’s engineering is – not just in class, but we’re able to come up with stuff outside of class,” he said. “It shows how much better we are than other schools.”
While such grand statements might be difficult to prove using the results of one competition, another lower-scale comparison certainly cannot be disputed: Chung’s new television is certainly better than his old one.
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