Smart Cities Hackathon winners revealed

The winners of the Schneider Electric Smart Cities Hackathon have been announced.

This event enabled 12 teams to develop and pitch solutions addressing three real-world challenges that arise from increased urbanisation.

These included boosting patient satisfaction, employee engagement and creating an integrated transport system.

Teams were asked to pitch their ideas to the judging panel — including Shark Tank star, entrepreneur and investor Steve Baxter; Zone President of Schneider Electric Pacific, Gareth O’Reilly; and Colette Grgic, Innovation Officer at BlueChilli — with the chance to be rewarded a cash prize of $3000, a place in BlueChilli’s CityConnect bootcamp accelerator program and the opportunity to secure a $100,000 investment.

Team ‘MySpot’ took away the winning prize on the day with a solution that harnesses artificial intelligence to help rail users identify carriage occupancy in real time and improve the travel experience. By encouraging a more even distribution of passengers across the train, load and unload times are reduced, helping in the efficient running of the network.

“With continual urban growth putting pressure on city infrastructure, we were looking for innovative ways to make our cities more efficient and effective places to live,” said Schneider’s O’Reilly.

“We certainly found this at our smart cities hackathon and hope this inspires the next generation of movers and shakers to take this innovative thinking to the next level.”

Darren Fraser, team leader for MySpot and Director, Citect and ClearSCADA, at Schneider Electric, said, “We are absolutely thrilled to win Schneider Electric and BlueChilli’s Smart Cities Hackathon. Inspired by the challenges we face in our everyday life, the team knew there was an opportunity to harness the power of technology to make a real difference. Once the initial excitement has worn off, we look forward to exploring how we can take our vision and turn it into reality.”

Winners of each subcategory, ‘live’, ‘work’ and ‘move’, were awarded a $2000 prize. Teams included:

• Live: Team Mem (Siemens, Urban Bio, Freelance, Schneider Electric): An app to facilitate communication on medical information between a patient and their personal support network.
• Work: Team Breaking Good (Academy Xi, UNSW Student, General Assembly Programming Graduate,  Schneider Electric): A system giving real-time feedback through an everyday habit at work through an interactive feedback platform.
• Move: Team Pulse (Parallel Parking – a start-up): Use of facial recognition software to capture data on pedestrian movements during the ‘last mile’ of travel into the city to improve transport planning.

“It’s exciting to see like-minded innovators come together to showcase their amazing work,” said Jacinta Hargan, Director Future Transport, at Transport for NSW, and partner of this Smart Cities Hackathon.

“Technology offers limitless possibilities for improving and personalising the public transport experience and we’re proud to support launchpads for innovators.”

Sponsors of the hackathon included Amazon Web Services, BlueChilli and Ingram Micro, with partners including Hackathons Australia, Transport for New South Wales Government, Smart Cities Council and Academy Xi.

Image courtesy of Schneider Electric.

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