Science market promises lots of fun and innovation

A three-day science fair showcasing brilliant ideas and creative innovations will be held through Sunday at the Greenland Being Fun retail mall in Xuhui District.

More than 10 green stalls have been put up, creating a “scientific forest.”

Local company Versa is showcasing its advanced facial recognition technology that can capture faces and figures from a photo and replace the background. It allows people to “travel through time and place, between reality and the virtual world” in a second.

The company’s app, Versa, or Makalong Wantu in Chinese, has been rated as a top app by the Apple store, and it has gained more than 20 million users around the world after it was launched in August 2018.

“Now you are in Xuhui and you take a photo. After you edit the photo on our app, what’s behind you is not where you are at but the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Big Ben in London,” said Wen Xiyue, operating manager of the company. “Also, it can create scenes like that you are in Vincent van Gogh’s pictures or on planets in the universe. It makes it easy for everyone to create unique photos.”

A local environmental protection company is displaying a processing machine that can turn wet kitchen scraps into organic fertilizer.

The machine, especially designed to be used by families, can process about 1.5 kilograms of wet garbage within 24 hours and produce 0.075 kilograms of fertilizer. The rest is degraded into vapor.

However, the machine hasn't been so popular with Chinese families. “We’ve sold 30,000 machines in Japan in three years, but we haven’t planned to expand to the local market because we still need time for local families to accept it,” said Gong Ye, chief operating officer of the company.

The company also produces large machines for commercial use. According to Gong, some local schools, retail malls and government departments have started using the machines.

A rowing machine produced by local sports company Mobi is another popular exhibit at the fair.

Installed with a water tank, the machine allows users to feel like they are rowing in real waterways. Also, Mobi has designed an online system which provides scenes of real waterways and allows users to have online races with their friends.

“We solved the problem that many people don’t want to do sports because it's boring, we've made it interesting,” said Yin Feng, vice general manager of the company.