University IoT Challenge - Voting Open!

Back in March, element14 announced the launch of the University IoT Challenge - a collaboration with Rhode & Schwarz. Students and course leaders across the UK were asked to submit a proposal for an IoT project with the capacity to help people in need - from providing a tool for individuals with complex physical or mental needs to improving the quality of life for people living in third-world countries.

We've selected three finalists from the proposals we received - each outlining an exciting and innovative IoT project. Now the power's in your hands. Take a look at the three proposals below and cast a vote for your favourite. After voting closes on Friday 13th July, the winning team will win £5,000 of equipment to turn their project into a reality - plus a Test & Measurement bundle from Rhode and Schwarz!

E.L.L.A. - A Voice-Controlled Lifestyle Assistant for the Long-Term Housebound

Proposal submitted by alandross of Highbury College, Portsmouth.

The principle concept of E.L.L.A. is to develop a voice-controlled assistant to help individuals who are long-term housebound - through illness, disability, dementia etc. - to maintain an independent lifestyle for as long as physically possible. By combining existing voice, video and internet technologies, the goal is to provide an access portal to the outside world - using Raspberry PI3, a camera module, USB microphone and Google Assistant software to provide a range of services including video conferencing functionality, automated reminders for doctor's appointments and prescriptions, backup to protect against lighting, power or internet loss and more...

Read the full proposal...

IoT-Enabled Hearing Protection Device

Proposal submitted by yingzhang of University of West London

Each year, approximately 22 million workers in the USA alone are at risk of hearing damage or hearing loss due to occupational exposure to industrial noise. This proposal brings together digital signal processing (DSP) noise cancellation, Bluetooth connectivity, smartphones, traditional hearing protection and complementary technologies involving cloud and big data analytics to enable better health and safety protection and data-driven decision making in areas where hearing damage is an occupational hazard, while also ensuring that workers can communicate effectively in even the noisiest environments.

Read the full proposal...

WSN - The Future of Precision Agriculture

Proposal submitted by sdaskalakis of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Direct sensing can make agricultural systems safer, more efficient, more accurate, and more productive. However, agricultural applications frequently involve large, expansive areas where wireless connection for communication and power is undesirable or impracticable. This proposal discusses the implementation of 30 low-cost and ultra-low power wireless sensor nodes/tags for agriculture, based on the principles of backscatter radio communication, plus a low-cost, battery-free backscatter WSN with a reader/emitter box installed on a UAV drone. The drone will fly to designated field areas and retrieve information wirelessly using a battery-powered RFID reader with data logging capabilities.

Once the flight is finished and the drone is near to the base station (home), the reader system will upload the information to the cloud via a WiFi link.

Read the full proposal...

Vote for the proposal you'd be most interested in seeing developed further using the poll below. Voting closes on Friday 13th July.

If you have any questions about the proposals, feel free to ask the entrants - they're all registered members of the element14 community and ready to campaign hard for your votes!