Taiwan students win awards at Apple's app development contest
一款突破性的台灣應用程式榮獲蘋果應用程式商店大獎
| TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Student teams from Taiwan won four awards at last year’s Apple Mobile Application Innovation Contest for their projects in healthcare, cooking, and stress relief, marking the best performance ever by Taiwanese participants.
The 10th contest, held at China’s Zhejiang University in November, attracted 4,281 teams from 1,293 schools worldwide. Of the seven top honors awarded, two went to Taiwanese teams, highlighting their creativity. At a showcase held by Apple’s Taiwan branch on Wednesday, award-winning Taiwanese teams presented their projects and highlighted their potential for real-world applications, per CNA. A team led by Qian Hong-rui (錢泓瑞), a PhD student at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Networking and Multimedia, developed iMirror, an immersive system that helps people recovering from stroke with rehabilitation. Their project won the contest’s top honor. The team designed iMirror to make traditional mirror therapy less repetitive. Using the Apple Vision Pro with 4K resolution, the system helps the brain coordinate limb movements. It also uses gesture tracking to capture motions during rehabilitation. Mirror therapy is a rehabilitation method that uses the brain’s ability to adapt. It reflects the movement of an unaffected limb in a mirror, helping to restore movement in the affected limb after a stroke. Qian said that iMirror turns rehabilitation exercises into games to make therapy more engaging. Users can, for example, tap virtual balloons to stretch their wrist joints. Its built-in AI technology analyzes exercise data before and after sessions, helping therapists plan future treatment. VCook, developed by Chiang Hung-yeh (江竑燁), a student at Chung Yuan Christian University’s Department of Information and Computer Engineering, was also recognized at the competition. Chiang said that VCook is a cooking app that uses users’ health and activity data to create recipes suited to their daily needs. The app features Siri voice control, gesture navigation, a built-in timer, and cooking tips to ensure successful meals. Clear, an app designed to help relieve stress and developed by another team from NTU, also won an award at the event. The team said the app uses heart rate data from the Apple Watch to help users monitor their stress levels. The app features a virtual forest built with RealityKit and designed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Users can push away mist representing stress using hand gestures. Once the mist clears, it displays the user’s personal photos — such as smiling moments or travel memories — to help boost positive feelings. |
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| Michael Nakhiengchanh Taiwan News, Staff Writer | |
| 2026-01-14 |
