ISLAMABAD: During the regional finals of Huawei’s Middle East ICT Competition 2020, two Pakistani teams won, acquiring first and second positions.

“This year marked the fifth iteration of the Huawei ICT Competition, which included the practice competition and newly included innovation track of the competition ... the innovation competition came to a close yesterday with Pakistan teams from Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology and University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore winning the ‘Best Application Project Award’ and the ‘Excellence in Health and Wellbeing Award’ respectively,” read a press release.

It said GIK’s team supervised by Dr Ghulam Abbas included Mohammad Inam, Uzair Ahmed and Gulfam Hussain. They designed a cloud based AI-application called ‘Wear-tificially’ which will enable users to virtually try on clothes. The application aims to make people’s experience of shopping from home easier during the pandemic.

The team from UET, mentored by Dr Mohammad Usman Ghani Khan with Shoaib Shabbir, Arooj Zaib and Umer Lodhi as members created a robot for analysing and improving social interaction of autistic individuals.

By automating the process of speech therapy for autistic children, they designed a syllabus of words that the robot was taught so it could evaluate the child’s response.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2021