SLIIT students emerge winners at e-Swabhimani Awards

Wednesday, 10 December 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The dynamic team from SLIIT were crowned winners at the e-Swabhimani Awards 2014, under the e-Inclusion and Participation category. The highly competitive e-Swabhimani event provides national recognition to the best locally-produced e-content and applications. ‘Smart Cyber Assist’ the innovative project developed by SLIIT, was designed by D.M.T.L. Dharmasena (Team Leader), J.S. Galagedara, T.C.K. Arachchi, and A.D.I.T. Jayalath. The team was supervised and co-supervised by Dilshan De Silva and Chathurangika Kahandawaarachchi respectively.

Standing from left: Sithara Galagedara, Tharindu Dharmasena (Team Leader), Dilshan De Silva (Team Supervisor), Prof. Lalith Gamage (President/Vice-Chancellor), Dr. Malitha Wijesundara (Dean, Faculty of Computing), Iresha Jayalath and Thiwanka Arachchi “We are extremely thrilled about the outstanding performance of our students. We commend their commitment and passion towards creating this novel application, which could benefit many in our society. As an institute our goal is to produce graduates who will strengthen the IT industry and bring community groups who have limited access to the field into the knowledge society,” noted SLIIT President and CEO Professor Lalith Gamage. Smart Cyber Assist is an application which permits voice command activation of computer operations. This holds the potential to empower differently abled users and reduces digital divide between technology-empowered and technology-excluded communities. Smart Cyber Assist allows the user to control the functions of Windows (versions 7, 8, 8.1), other major operating systems and softwares, such as media players and web browsers.

Standing from left: Thiwanka K. Arachchi, Iresha Jayalath, Dilshan De Silva (Team Supervisor), Tharindu Dharmasena (Team Leader) and Sithara Galagedara This leading edge application supports all three languages; English, Sinhala and Tamil. Hence users may customise voice commands according to individual preferences and comfort level. The application also responds to the user’s commands in the chosen language. Smart Cyber Assist effectively neutralises the barrier of distance. It allows a person to access his/her personal computer, from any location in the world, in multiple ways (via an Android application, a regular mobile phone, Skype, or Micro-website). Thus Smart Cyber Technology lives up to its name, making computers more accessible to more people, noted D.M.T.L. Dharmasena, the team leader. “Currently, not many applications are user friendly for the differently abled, however, this innovative application has the opportunity to attract a large market and has the potential to become a widely used app. Smart Cyber Assist, the application created by this young group of SLIIT students, is a final year project. An award winning final year project proves the quality of our institution. Since its inception, SLIIT has maintained high academic standards and affirmed its status as one of the premier degree awarding institutes in Sri Lanka,” commented SLIIT Chairman Professor Lakshman Ratnayake. e-Swabhimani is an initiative of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka aimed at recognising excellence in digital content creation.