VietNamNet Bridge – A well-known Vietnamese-Australian inventor has been nominated as a New South Wales Australian of the Year Finalist, for his work developing his revolutionary autonomous wheelchair--the Aviator.
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hung lives in Castal Hill. He is the deputy head of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Hung, who has been honored as “the teacher of inventions,” has invented many medical devices that have become very useful for patients.

One of Hung’s most outstanding inventions is his revolutionary autonomous wheelchair, the Aviator, which Anthill SMART 100 ranked third in its list of top 100 Australian innovations for 2011.

This was decided by a panel of 100 expert judges who were looking for innovative ideas that were novel and that had the potential to be commercially successful by meeting the needs of a specific target market.

Anthill is an online business channel dedicated to the promotion of Australian innovation and entrepreneurship. It is one of the top 1000 Australian websites and founded the SMART 100 Index to identify and promote new innovations around Australia.

"I'm interested in research outcomes that can assist people with illnesses and disabilities to achieve greater independence, and the Aviator technology does exactly that," said Prof. Nguyen Hung, who also developed Hypomon, a non-invasive diabetes monitoring system which is being commercialized by AiMedics and recently attracted a $1.94 million Commercialization Australia grant.

"This research is significant because we now have the opportunity to apply the same technological approach to other disability aids. In future we may be able to use it help people with a range of tasks in their everyday lives, and adapt it so that it can be applied to different types of disabilities."

The results of the vote for Australian of the Year Awards will be announced on January 25, 2012, in Canberra.

T.L