Three NUS researchers have developed wearable devices that help perform gait analysis. The four sensors installed at the toe and heel of the shoes can detect the speed, rotation and step length of the user's movement. The data is reflected in the app in real time for analysis by the therapist.
Dr Boyd Anderson, a lecturer from NUS Computing's Department of Computer Science, said: “If you are an elderly person, you may be more frail when walking, and being able to quantify that is very important. If you’re a sprinter, seeing how every step hits the track is also very important for say, optimising your performance. Traditionally, you would use a clinical gait mat which is pressure sensitive."
Medical gait mats take up space and are expensive, costing upwards of $10,000. The cost of this device however, is expected to be under $500. In addition to relying on an inertial measurement instrument to measure acceleration and rotation during movement, the device also combines ultra-wideband radio technology to collect step lengths and step widths that are difficult to measure. Its accuracy rate is 97%.
The four sensors mounted on the shoes run on lithium batteries and has a battery life of 18 hours per charge. The research team has already applied for a technology patent. They are working to bring this technology to professional athletes who are looking to improve their skills.
The team is also looking at ways to incorporate the sensors for use in various running shoes.
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Life has a funny way of leading people down paths they least expect. Just ask NUS Computing lecturer Boyd Anderson. Two years ago, Anderson, then a PhD student, found himself at Mustafa Centre, a 24-hour mall in the heart of Singapore’s Little India district. It was 3 a.m., and Anderson was throwing what seemed to be a random assortment of things into a shopping cart: a hot glue gun, Velcro tape, disposable socks, and 12 pairs of sneakers, each a different size.
In March 2011, the New York Times introduced a policy that would later be recognised as a milestone in media history. The newspaper, deemed one of the best in the world, declared that its online content would no longer be completely free — after the first 20 articles, readers would have to pay a small fee.
25 September 2020 – Have you ever heard of the ‘cappuccino effect’? It is not the latest trend in foam art among aficionado baristas, but a common malpractice committed in the shipping industry through negligence.
NUS and ST Engineering are collaborating on a S$9 million, multi-year advanced digital technologies research programme to further their common goals of building a people-centric, smart future for Singapore and beyond.
Research efforts of this new programme will focus on technologies related to Smart City as well as Smart Maintenance, Repairs and Overhaul (MRO), covering five areas: resource optimisation and scheduling; prescriptive analytics; decision and sense-making; reasoning engine and machine learning; as well as digital twin. These research areas support ST Engineering’s focus on developing differentiated and people-centric, smart city solutions that meet the present and future needs of cities around the world. The interdisciplinary research areas are also aligned with NUS’ endeavours as a driving force behind smart city innovations, leveraging its deep expertise that spans multiple domains and faculties.
Professor Chen Tsuhan, NUS Deputy President (Research & Technology), said, “As Singapore advances its position as a Smart Nation, having the right enterprise architecture to support those goals will determine if true digital transformation can be achieved. Over the years, NUS and ST Engineering have enjoyed a close and productive relationship. This new collaboration will combine NUS’ expertise in the science of cities with ST Engineering's industry knowledge to co-create people-centric Smart City solutions that will form the foundational systems to bring about not just impactful, but radical, change to the lives of people in Singapore and the world.”
Your heartbeat quickens as you watch your video game avatar run through the twisting corridors of the castle. There is still treasure to be found and a hostage to be rescued, and time is running out. Suddenly, a large shadow looms on the dim candlelit stone walls, followed by a low roar that sounds awfully close. You take a deep breath, clutch your mace a bit tighter, and ready yourself to attack. You swing around the corner, weapon raised, and…
28 August 2020 – Six NUS Computing final-year students and alumni received the NUS Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize (OURP) for Academic Year 2019/2020.
The annual, university-wide competition encourages undergraduates to pursue research projects and recognises exceptional undergraduate researchers for their work.
A group of security researchers from the department of computer science at the National University of Singapore has created an attack model they call SpiKey to determine the key shape that will open any tumbler lock.
Soundarya Ramesh, Harini Ramprasad and Jun Han are the talented hackers behind SpiKey, which they say "significantly lowers the bar for an attacker," when compared to a more traditional lock-picking attack. The theoretical methodology is deceptively simple, listening for the sound of the key as it moves past tumbler pins in turn when the key is inserted in the lock.
The Singapore hackers use a simple smartphone to record the sound of the key being inserted, and withdrawn, with a smartphone and then observe the time between each tumbler pin click using their custom key reverse-engineering application. This forms the secret of the key, the fine-grained bitting depths which, the researchers report, can differ by as little as 15 milli-inches, or 0.381 millimeters.
"As SpiKey infers the shape of the key, it is inherently robust against anti-picking features in modern locks," the research paper states, "and grants multiple entries without leaving any traces."
19 August 2020 – The Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF) will be funding three research projects by NUS Computing Associate Professors He Bingsheng, Huang Ke-Wei and Liang Zhenkai.
In 2015, Shi Ying Lim was working on her Ph.D. in Austin, Texas. As part of her work, she studied a budding health IT startup that was trying to develop an app to help patients with chronic diseases.
The aim was to help patients — who were living with conditions such as diabetes or had just been discharged after surgery — better manage their care. Among other things, the app would send patients reminders to take their medication or change their dressing, and to contact their doctors if complications arose.
A new research institute will be set up by the end of the year to drive education, research and entrepreneurship in digital finance in the region. The institute, called the Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF), is jointly developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), the three organisations announced on Tuesday (Aug 4).
It will be hosted at NUS and offer a master's programme, as well as award scholarships to students to pursue further research at the doctoral level. It will also train post-doctoral fellows in the areas of digital finance and fintech. Through its education programme, the AIDF will build the FinTech leadership pipeline for Singapore and the wider region. The institute will be based at the Kent Ridge campus of NUS.
4 August 2020 – NUS Computing Dean’s Chair Associate Professor Yu Haifeng won the Best Paper Award at the 32nd ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA 2020), held online from 14 to 16 July 2020.
21 July 2020 – NUS Computing Provost's Chair Professor Abhik Roychoudhury and his team received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at the 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2020), held online from 27 June to 19 July 2020. The conference provides a platform for researchers to present and discuss innovations and trends in the field of software engineering.
Confined to their homes during the circuit breaker period, Singapore’s Covid-19 lockdown, people began ordering certain products in earnest: fitness equipment, home office accessories, flour and other baking goods. If, like many, you were forced to turn to online shopping in recent months, you might have realised what a complex beast it can be.
Using Intel’s neuromorphic chip, Loihi, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) developed an artificial skin that allows robots to detect touch 1,000 times faster than the human sensory nervous system. The system can also identify the shape, texture and hardness of objects 10 times faster than the blink of an eye. The researchers believe this work could improve human-robot interaction, making things like caregiving robots and automated robotic surgery more feasible.
NUS said enabling a human-like sense of touch in robotics could significantly improve current functionality, offering the example of robotic arms fitted with artificial skin that could easily adapt to changes in goods manufactured in a factory, using tactile sensing to identify and grip unfamiliar objects with the right amount of pressure to prevent slipping.
New research by a team of NUS Computing professors is promising to restore privacy to individuals by making their online images unrecognisable to even the most advanced facial recognition technologies.
Led by Professor Mohan Kankanhalli, Dean of NUS Computing, the research team from NUS Computer Science has developed a technique that safeguards sensitive information in photos by making subtle changes that are almost imperceptible to humans, but render selected features undetectable by known algorithms.
Today’s virtual assistants and smart devices have come a long way. They can tell you if you’re running low on milk, what the weather will be like tomorrow, or change the TV channel without you having to lift a finger. But if researcher Desmond Ong has his way, the Google Homes and Alexas of the future might be able to add another attribute to their already impressive resume — emotional intelligence.
24 June 2020 – NUS Computing Distinguished Professor Ooi Beng Chin and his team have won a 2020 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award at the 2020 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, which was held online from 14 to 19 June. The conference is a leading international forum for researchers who explore and advance research on data management.
24 June 2020 – NUS Computing Professor Roger Zimmermann and his team won second place at the Adaptation Algorithms for Near-Second Latency Grand Challenge, held online from March to May this year.
When Yingda Zhai was working on his PhD in Austin, Texas, he used to stroll through the neighbourhood he lived in not too far from campus. On these walks, he saw something that puzzled him, something that would set the course of his research for the next few years.
What Zhai noticed was this: his neighbourhood wasn’t that well-to-do, and lining the streets were shops like MetroPCS, Cricket Wireless, and FamilyMobile. These small cell phone companies, also known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), offered cheap plans without any contracts or credit checks. But the snag was that they came with slower connection speeds, smaller network coverage, and without features such as phone tethering.
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