In 2018, Lab MGM's researchers presented alongside Kyushu Institute of Technology's Chikamune Wada, inside a wider, faculty level FILKOM partnership with Kyutech.
In October 2018, a professor from Japan stood in front of FILKOM students to talk about wheelchairs that respond to head movements and devices that let people with limited speech communicate through a screen.
Professor Chikamune Wada of the Kyushu Institute of Technology, known as Kyutech, in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, traveled to Fakultas Ilmu Komputer, Universitas Brawijaya, for a guest lecture titled Introduction of Assistive Research for Disabled and Elderly, held on Thursday, October 18, 2018. The session opened with a presentation from Fitri Utaminingrum, head of FILKOM's Computer Vision research group, on a smart wheelchair that could be controlled five different ways, including manually, by remote control, by voice command, by head movement, or automatically by following a guide walking ahead of it.
The second presentation came from Herman Tolle, head of FILKOM's Media, Game and Mobile Technology (MGM) research group, who described MGM's own work on disability and elderly related technology, including indoor location estimation, user activity recognition, and a head movement control system called HEMOCS. He highlighted iHelp, a head worn device built on HEMOCS that lets users with limited mobility or speech select words with head movements and have them spoken aloud. Prof. Wada closed the session with an overview of assistive technology research worldwide and his own studies on crutch walking mechanics and public bus accessibility for blind passengers in Thailand.
This lecture sat inside a broader, growing relationship between FILKOM and Kyutech, one that led FILKOM to sign an institutional memorandum of understanding with Kyutech the following year, in 2019, with exchange and research cooperation continuing since. That MoU is a faculty level agreement between FILKOM and Kyutech as a whole, not a separate contract held by Lab MGM on its own. Lab MGM's connection to Kyutech runs through moments such as this guest lecture, where its researchers present alongside Kyutech's own faculty inside that wider institutional relationship, rather than through a bilateral agreement of its own.
