Two students, Yitong Shang and Yang Chen, majoring in Product Design and Manufacture won the Best Innovation Award in the 5th G-Pioneer & Co:lab Online Global University Innovation Challenge 2020. The competition is organized by Geely Automobile and this year there are participants from world leading Universities such as Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National University of Singapore, Coventry University, University of the Arts London, The University of Melbourne, etc.
In this competition, Yitong Shang and Yang Chen worked out with a nature-based “carsickness medicine”. In daily life, these two girls are troubled by carsickness, so they want to develop a softer solution for carsick people. As the existing treatment of carsickness is mainly physical stimulation and chemical stimulation, although it is efficient, it cannot bring good experience for passengers. According to their research, the motion sickness occurs due to a difference between actual and expected motion. Symptoms commonly include nausea, vomiting, cold sweat, headache, sleepiness, yawning, loss of appetite, and increased salivation. The cause of motion sickness is either real or perceived motion. Therefore, Yitong Shang and Yang Chen decided to find a solution combining traditional method with the psychological solution together, which is “Car+Plant” solution.
Through the research, Shang and Chen found that the increase of oxygen content in the car can alleviate carsickness, and based on this, plants are set on the roof of the back seat of the car. In addition, passengers can control the movement and lift the plant through mobile phone app or manually, and release oxygen through the photosynthesis of plants. To a certain extent, it also distracts the attention of carsick people and brings them more pleasant experience.
Yitong Shang said that the PDM programme emphasise the design experience accumulation. The University or in specific our Faculty has brought them rich opportunities for practice and applying the knowledge and skills they learnt in the class to a real-life project, for example, the investigation of the market and customer, sketching, 3D modeling and etcetera.
In fact, this is not the first time that UNNC has won the prize in this competition. In the 4th G-Pioneer & Co:lab Global University Innovation Challenge 2019, three teams from PDM programme won the first, second and third place respectively. In the future, we expect UNNC students to have more wonderful performances on bigger stages.
Published on 22 September 2020