The 5 million dong "gamble" of two friends specializing in News
Cleaning up his computer, he accidentally found pictures of his 12th grade project. Le Duc Luu (born 2006) posted them on social media as a way to preserve memories.
Just a few hours later, he did not expect his video to cause a "storm" with hundreds of thousands of views and interactions.
The video recounting eLab's journey shared by Le Duc Luu (born 2006) on TikTok received a lot of interaction (Screenshot).
Behind the image of eLab (Virtual reality education system supporting innovation in teaching of the 2018 General Education Program) - the project that won third prize at the National Science and Technology Competition for high school students in the 2023 - 2024 school year is a long journey of a pair of close friends in Quang Tri.
The eLab story begins in late 2022 with a subject that many students hesitate about: Chemistry.
Duc Luu confessed that he was not good at Chemistry, always found it difficult to understand dry formulas on paper, so he was "afraid" to study. In contrast to his friend, Nguyen Ngoc Anh Tuan was an excellent "Chemistry tree".
This compensation gave Luu a bold idea with his colleague: "Why not create a world where students can see with their own eyes how substances and molecules interact with each other?"
From that idea, the research team set out to bring intuitive, vivid experiences, helping students gain a deeper understanding of knowledge, while saving costs on construction and maintenance of equipment and experimental tools in the real world.
Recalling his experience participating in the project to bring Quang Tri Citadel into a 3D virtual model, Luu found the answer in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. Therefore, the group decided to develop eLab starting with Chemistry, then expanding to Physics and Biology.
But from idea to reality is a towering "financial" wall before our eyes.
“The first ‘investment’ for the project came from the scholarship money we both saved. We pooled our money together to buy an old virtual reality headset for about 5 million VND,” Luu said.
The old VR glasses were bought by Luu and Tuan together with their money to realize their virtual lab (Photo: Character provided).
Without a modern research room, the group's working "headquarters" is a small bedroom in Luu's house in Dong Ha ward (Quang Tri). For the convenience of research, Tuan moved in with Luu.
However, the biggest challenge is still how to put a program into virtual reality glasses.
At that time, there was almost no documentation on VR programming, and this technology and artificial intelligence (AI) had not yet made the advances they have today. The two 17-year-old boys had to figure it out 100% on their own.
“It took us almost a month to get the first program running on the glasses. It was an overwhelming feeling, even though the program was still very rudimentary,” Luu shared.
Panorama of the "laboratory" eLab of the Quang Tri couple (Video: Character provided).
As early as 2023, when the AI fever had not yet exploded globally as it is today, the team integrated the “Virtual Tutor” feature. By combining ChatGPT for content processing and Text-to-Speech technology, eLab allows students to ask questions directly and receive answers in natural Vietnamese voices.
“Golden ticket” and unexpected events
After more than 3 months of hard work writing code and debugging, Luu and Tuan understood that eLab could not stay on the computer forever. It was time for their “brainchild” to face strict judges: teachers and schoolmates.
Experiments conducted on eLab allow students to directly observe chemical reactions (Video: Character provided).
“We were able to introduce the product to classes in the school, but only a few students were allowed to wear glasses to operate it directly, while the whole class would observe their perspective through the TV screen. Although we didn’t get to experience it all at once, the classroom atmosphere had never been so exciting,” Luu excitedly recounted.
The survey results surprised even the authors: More than 90% of students, including those in the Social Sciences department who were not interested in Natural Sciences subjects, expressed interest and desire to study using this method.
Students are excited to experience eLab (Video: Character provided).
In particular, eLab has touched the aspirations of subject teachers. Dangerous chemical reactions, microscopic cell structures or human body anatomy models, which teachers previously only knew how to describe in words or static pictures, now appear vividly before their eyes.
Just by wearing the glasses, users will be taken to a virtual laboratory. In there, they will be able to perform chemical experiments, observe physical phenomena or biological phenomena in the human body.
The initial success at Le Quy Don High School for the Gifted has become a launching pad for eLab to enter a larger arena: the Quang Tri Provincial Science and Technology Competition for high school students in the 2023-2024 school year.
eLab at the Quang Tri Provincial Science and Technology Competition for high school students in 2023-2024 (Photo: Character provided).
eLab passed the school-level qualifying round, entered the list of 5 best representatives, then continued to compete with a series of other strong projects in the provincial round.
The two students’ tireless efforts paid off. Overcoming potential competitors, eLab, along with the project “Translating Gloves” (by another group of friends from the same school), won the first prize overall, representing Quang Tri province to advance straight to the National Finals.
From the comments of the school teachers and the Professional Council, the couple continued to improve the product, adding more features and overcoming some shortcomings.
The victory at the Provincial Science and Technology Competition helped two young men get the "golden ticket" to represent Quang Tri province to go straight to the National Finals (Photo: Character provided).
But right in the midst of the frantic preparations, when the joy was just beginning, another challenge came.
Before the final round of the competition was approaching, on the way to Luu's house, Anh Tuan unfortunately had a serious traffic accident, was hit by a truck and broke his thigh bone.
In such dire circumstances, the team spirit of the two young men really shined. Lying on the hospital bed, Tuan still did not give up on the project for a moment. The two men switched to working online.
Luu became a good partner, meeting regularly with teachers every week to perfect the product. During the preparation period, Luu's father also became a valuable "assistant" when supporting the two young people to edit and complete the project report.
Overcoming all, eLab achieved great success, received enthusiastic response and excellently won Third Prize at the National Science and Technology Competition for high school students in the 2023 - 2024 school year.
Project "hibernating" to wait for the right opportunity
Having achieved initial success and received many investment offers, it seemed that eLab would continue to go far, but Luu and Tuan made a surprising decision: to temporarily stop the project.
Sharing the reason, Duc Luu said: “We realized that the product at that time was made based on instinct. Having an idea is just coding, as long as it runs. The system lacked a systematic structure to be able to expand and maintain in the long term.”
From a corner of the room with old virtual reality glasses, close friends Duc Luu and Anh Tuan created a virtual laboratory with the hope that all students can participate in visual practice (Photo: Character provided).
With the mindset of a technology student, Luu sees the hardware barrier: “The old glasses still need a controller, are quite cumbersome and not cheap enough to be popularized by the masses. In the future, if there are lighter, more convenient and more reasonably priced devices, hopefully the project will return with a better and more innovative version.”
But for Luu and Tuan, pausing is not giving up. For the two male students, this is a necessary pause to accumulate basic knowledge, preparing for the return of this project and many other ideas.
Not only stopping at Chemistry, the couple also wants to bring Physics experiments and complex anatomical models encapsulated in virtual reality glasses (Photo: Character provided).
Leaving high school, the two pieces of eLab are now studying at opposite ends of the country. Luu chose the University of Technology (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) to pursue software and AI. Meanwhile, Tuan went to the South to study Computer Engineering at the University of Information Technology (Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City) to specialize in hardware and Robotics.
“Tuan is quiet and careful, while I am more extroverted and 'impulsive'. We are still planning to reunite. One person works on hardware, the other on software, that would be the perfect complement,” Luu shared about his companion.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/khoa-hoc/doc-het-hoc-bong-2-hoc-sinh-xay-ca-phong-thi-nghiem-nam-trong-kinh-vr-cu-20251124151552995.htm
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