The design
This year, for the first time, we challenged students at the R-IoT Games, an Internet of Things (IoT) competition for all Flemish-speaking colleges, universities and training centers. During this competition, teams tackled social issues using IoT.
Their task:
"To make our society a better place with the help of IoT."
Easier said than done perhaps, but this should be taken very broadly, as long as it benefits a specific group within our society. Can you identify specific problems that affect young people, the elderly, non-profit organizations, or perhaps even animals? Or can you envisage ways to make certain processes much simpler or faster? There are infinite options in this competition, as long as society benefits from it in some way.
After registering their ideas, thirty teams set to work to complete the first part of the competition. In this part, the teams spent six weeks refining their ideas. They made a video to pitch their ideas, analyzed the social challenge and IoT's possibilities exhaustively and finally, developed a prototype.
In the end, nine projects were chosen by our school coordination team. In addition, one more team was selected by the public through social voting.
The hackathon
A hackathon consists of a two-day workshop in which (small) teams come up with and develop creative solutions to everyday problems. Complexity does not play a role here; on the contrary, fast, easy alternative solutions are preferred.
On March 1 and 2, eight of the ten teams that had been admitted competed in a hackathon, the grand R-IoT Games finale. KULeuven, Odisee Brussel, HoGent, Howest (Bruges), AP Hogeschool, Intec Brussel and Thomas More Geel were all represented.
