Building A Sustainable Singapore with IoT
SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Their machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. Their end-to-end suite of applications and services enables their customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously and make a difference. Arm is committed to supporting the development of future generations of engineers. They provide a wide range of teaching and learning materials for students, teachers, and professors through their School Programme and University Programme. They also enable access to commercially proven IP, tools and resources at no charge for academic research use.
Since 2017, SMU’s SCIS has been working closely with software and technology systems provider SAP. The SAP Next-gen student project aims to develop innovative sustainability solutions using SAP software. In 2021, Arm joined the collaboration, providing students with real-world IoT devices from its partner ecosystem to work with. Now, the students could generate real data, process it using SAP’s cloud analytics platform, and build real-world prototypes.
With the help of both Arm and SAP , the students took on projects spanned from coastal erosion control to smart farming. Specifically, they were smart farming, pollution monitoring and coastal protection - all major problems facing Singapore.
One of the students' team worked to develop a smart farming system. The goal was to reduce Singapore’s reliance on imports by improving food security, which meant finding a local, sustainable source of vegetables. They created a prototype of an automated shelter, which would measure certain threshold values and carry out actions depending on the status of the crops. The team aimed to assess how far they could automate the process with the use of Arm IP
Another students' team took on a beach management system. They wanted to be able to detect strong waves which may be responsible for soil erosion - one of the root causes of rising sea levels. Their solution involves installing sensors in the coastal waters in Singapore, allowing government agencies to monitor and manage conditions at beaches across the country, using a dashboard they designed. They developed a map, for example, that allows users to see various data on temperature, humidity and waves in different areas of Singapore .
Another team approached the air pollution issue with an air pollution detection system for childcare centres. From their research, they concluded that children were more susceptible to traffic pollution levels, but there was no system in place to detect and warn parents, children or caretakers about the pollution levels in childcare centres or their surroundings.
Read more here: https://community.arm.com/arm-research/b/articles/posts/singapore-management-university
All students agreed that there was a steep learning curve as they had not had any experience of these technologies. However, the mentors from Arm and SAP did an excellent job in mentoring and providing guidance to assist them along the way.
The students gave their final presentations in November, at a three-hour workshop with executives from SAP and Arm and the judging panel. Each student team had several minutes to present their solutions. They had to field questions, and explain the value of the project and the logic behind it. Both Arm and SAP were overwhelmed by what the students were able to deliver on challenging topics with a tight timeline for solution building.
“This is not an area that I ever thought I would be focusing on. I am very used to just coding on the computer without a physical device to work on. So , it was a very interesting module to take- as it gave me hands-on experience with an important technology.” - Haziq, SCIS student
“I will probably be planning to continue doing DevOps, or maybe cloud architecture. Learning new hardware and IoT technologies has definitely helped broaden my technical view, so maybe in the future I could end up working on data pipelines for IoT.” - Ryan, SCIS student
“I am very pleased with the results. And this experience will definitely help me in the real world. These days, IoT is one of the biggest demands out there.” - Izzat, SCIS student
“The skills learned here, from working in build teams to collaborating with industry partners, will be very useful for the students. At least some of them will be interested in tech-entrepreneurship, in running their own start-ups after they graduate. And some, of course, will join big firms like SAP. I am sure they will be able to apply the skills wherever they go.” - Lum Eng Kit, SCIS faculty instructor, Enterprise Business Solutions