#HEX 2018 — Building the Future
For the second year in a row HEX took place in the breeding ground for innovation as well as the smartest city of the world: Eindhoven. 300 people with over 60 different nationalities gathered together for this 32-hour long hackathon hosted at the 8th and 9th floor in the ‘Veemgebouw’ at Strijp-S to build state-of-the-art technology that will be part of our everyday life in a world 32 years from now. It’s no surprise that such an exciting happening attracts a lot of press and attention. As such, plenty of others have already written about the participants’ experiences and the atmosphere during the hackathon. The reason I still decided to dedicate another article to this event is to focus on the problems, ideas and implementation of the 3 winning teams. After all, building the future does not stop after just 32 hours.
🥇Kitten Run VR
Laura Donadoni (Italy), Davey Hurkmans (Netherlands), Nikolas Skartsilas (Greece), Sergio Soto (Mexico) & Philipp Durnay (Germany).
In hindsight, this internationally diverse team must have been positively surprised that they were eventually awarded the first prize of €1500. After all, on stage their presenter, Philipp, openly acknowledged that the team never expected to be selected for the top 10 teams shortly before that and therefore had not even prepared a pitch (or perhaps it was just a clever tactic to come across as humble..) Anyway, despite the fact that you may have improvised your final pitch, you guys somehow managed to convince the jury and I must admit that your proof-of-concept really hits the nail on the head in terms of the solution for the identified problem. With a bit of luck you may again unexpectedly take home any of the grand prizes at Europe’s biggest hackathon, Junction 2018, later this year!
Problem: VR equipment is still relatively expensive and therefore its potential is not yet accessible to the masses: at current you easily pay over $200 for a VR-headset alone, not even including accessories.
Solution: Google Cardboard VR Sports App (Android & iOS) that can be used in conjunction with any IoT-devices you already have at hand. For example, motion sensors, a pressure mat, voice input devices (e.g. Alexa) or even a smart tooth brush!
Proof of Concept: Easy-to-play Temple Run style mobile game in which the player needs to avoid running into obstacles such as kittens (you guessed it..) As you can see in the picture above Laura wore a harness to which custom hardware has been attached. This allowed for motion tracking throughout the Kitten Run VR game (e.g. jumping as she elegantly demonstrated).
Tagline: A virtual workout for body and soul… and there’s kittens
(check it out yourself in the video below! — made by Sergio 👏)
🥈CherryTea
Maxim Markelow (Russia), Andrei Vinogradov (Russia), Yulia Mishina (Russia) & Lucenko Kirill.
In university alone I already get overwhelmed by the number of requests for commitee work and board years. As such, it’s challenging to keep track of all the opportunities for voluntary work that are out there, let alone all the opportunities in, for example, Eindhoven. As Bloomberg highlights in the Future Society challenge especially smaller charities suffer from this lack of visibility. The app that you have developed, CherryTea, ticks most of the boxes regarding the assessment criteria (idea, creativity, demo, design, business model) and you even integrated the Twilio API to inform volunteers about their application status and possible changes for the event. Although I really like the problem you are trying to solve I’m curious to see how such a two-sided marketplace will work out in practice. In a way it’s a chicken and egg problem: not only charities need to become aware of the existence of the app but also the potential volunteers living in close proximity to the event. On the other hand, the most successful unicorn companies of today also had to overcome this challenge some day..
Problem: People miss out on opportunities to volunteer for local small-scale charities.
Solution: Peer to peer philantrophy Android app that matches supply and demand of volunteers. Recommendations within the app are based on the volunteers’ current location and preference for type of work (e.g. first aid).
Proof-of-Concept: Voluntary work categorized by type (Medicine, Ecology, Children, Animals, etc.). Users can view details about the event (description, date, location, number of volunteers asked vs signed up), get personal recommendations, sign up for an event (love the cherry shower after sign-up..) and stay up to date about last-minute changes through SMS. Moreover, the profile page showcases the volunteer’s past and upcoming activities in order to showcase trust.
Tagline: Want to contribute to your city? It’s time for CherryTea!
(check out their screencast below — if you miss some nice background music it may help to daydream about a bunch of delicious cherries..🍒)
Note, the fact that the requests do not match up with the categories is probably due to the usage of self-generated data.
🥉FleetVisio
Jérôme Fink (Belgium), Andrian To (UK), Jian Hong Lim (UK), Soulaiman Assikiou (Spain), Isabella Nubari (UK).
Again, a multidisciplinairy and multicultural team that wins a prize which reinforces the idea that having multiple points of view can be really beneficial for your overall team performance. Although their official team name, Table 18, might have not been so creative the combination of their highly technical solution to the vehicle optimisation problem for VDL-buses — combined with the most visually pleasing dashboard I have seen — turned out to be successful. As one of the few teams you managed to finish your well-structured pitch within 2 minutes and convince the jury, despite the fact that your Github readme says that you had no idea what you were doing (fortunately, the jury probably did not look into that..)
Problem: Opportunity to save costs on the purchase, operating and charging of electric VDL-buses.
Solution: Linear programming algorithm to determine the optimal number of vehicles, vehicle type and battery type as well as a realtime overview of the battery condition of operating buses as an indication of future costs.
Proof-of-Concept: The visual dashboard gives a good impression of how the final product could look like. Transportation managers have an overview of all the operating and charging busses for each line as well as the real-time battery condition and the total number of travelers. The fleet optimizer calculates the optimal distribution of bus types (LFA/LF), battery types (MP/HP) given the constraints entered by the operator in order to match total demand per city under minimal costs. Additionally, technical feasability has been demonstrated using existing Python optimization libraries (e.g. PuLP).
Tagline: An interface allowing administrators of public transportation fleet to visualize metrics about their network (have a look at their clickable InVision dashboard below!)
Did you spot the next Facebook among these 3 ideas? One that may be an integral part of our daily life in the year 2050? If not, then have a look at the other 54 teams in order to spot what-might-be a hidden gem or of course build the future yourself during #HEX 2019!
And yeah be prepared for the most intensive 32 hours of your life..
P.S. If you know (or just want to gossip) who👆this person is, feel free to do so to make sure he or she is there again in 2019!
P.P.S. On Sunday morning you might have seen me walking around to capture all your sleepy faces 😴. Have a look below to compare your team’s energy level after 29–31 hours with your fellow participants :-)
