The development of artificial intelligence (AI) creates room for improving human living standards, but how does it apply to our campus? Mr. Fan Mun Sum (Artificial Intelligence: Systems and Technologies/1) shared his idea of utilising augmented reality (AR) to enhance the campus experience for teachers and students, while his proposal, “HoloCampus”, won the S.H. Sung Creativity Award this year.

Q：Why did you apply AR technology in your award-winning entry “HoloCampus”? Was there anything that inspired you?

In just a decade, smartphones have replaced traditional cell phones and become the most indispensable backend devices for us. What about the next decade? Will smartphones be replaced by any new devices? Observing the rapid evolution of Augmented Reality (AR) technology, I believe that AR glasses have demonstrated their potential to replace smartphones as our backend devices in the next decade, as they can seamlessly integrate digital elements into the real world without disrupting human interaction, unlike smartphones and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. Meanwhile, I noticed that our campus lacks advanced digital infrastructure and services. Therefore, AR technology is selected for digitalising the campus in my entry, to provide a better experience for both students and staff while providing a sustainable digitisation experience for them.

Q：Which areas of campus management are covered by your project? What are your ultimate goals?

“HoloCampus” applies AR in five areas, including navigation, counselling, decoration, promotion, and tour guide. The target of the project is to revitalise our campus, improve the school life experience, and promote our college to the public more efficiently. The AR navigation system helps navigate students to specific destinations on campus by projecting directions right in front of their eyes using AR. Empowered with Ultra-wideband (UWB), AR navigation can be used to search for books in our library, which aims to reduce distractions during research. While the promotion system redefines event promotion methods, event organisers can easily post their multimedia advertisements anywhere using AR, which improves efficiency and the creativity of promotion campaigns. Additionally, AR is utilised in the decoration system to project virtual decorations onto the walls of the buildings, helping to decorate our campus during festivals. Lastly, the virtual tour guide system is designed to solve the lack of introductory tours on our campus, in which the virtual tour guide embedded with a Large Language Model (LLM) could introduce our campus details with multimedia elements and interact with the visitors.

Fan’s proposals included the usage of Ultra-wideband to locate books in the library, saving time in searching for physical books.

Q：Is there any reason for you to include an AR counselling service in your project?

The mental health of university students is always worrying. As shown in research, most Hong Kong students with depression are not willing to seek professional help, this has inspired me to design the AR counselling service for our schoolmates. While traditional counselling may seem too serious for them, in the AR counselling system, students can always interact or have a talk casually with our virtual counsellor, equipped with cute animal skins, anytime they like, regardless of whether they need help. Additionally, the counsellors are powered by character-LLM and AR to provide a natural, face-to-face conversation experience. During the conversation, AI will be adopted for analysis, helping students better understand their mental health condition and encouraging them to seek professional help if necessary.

Fan designed an animal as a virtual counsellor, aiming to initially assess students’ mental status and encourage students in need to seek professional service.

Q：As an undergraduate studying AI, what is your opinion on humans enhancing their use of AI? What can we do to be wary of our excessive dependence on AI?

I believe that the advantages of the massive application of AI will outweigh the disadvantages eventually. However, it is important to notice that AI is a double-edged sword, and misuse of it will lead to serious harm. Therefore, careful examination of the potential consequences of AI applications should be adopted to ensure the interests of humans, especially since we should notice that AI is just a tool for humans, and it could never replace human thinking and judgment. When using generative AI, we should always judge the outputs of the AI critically and examine the results carefully before using them. Most importantly, we must educate the next generation responsibly, such that they can think and judge independently and critically without the impact of generative AI.