Robot that identifies intruders wins student hackathon in San Francisco
A team led by a University of Alberta student took home three top prizes at a 24-hour hackathon in San Francisco with its roving security robot.
Electrical engineering student Megnath Ramesh (second left) with his team that took three top prizes at a San Francisco hackathon for programming a security robot to patrol places like malls, museums or homes and identify intruders.
“I still can’t believe it,” Megnath Ramesh said. “It was very surreal, for sure. I’ve attended a couple of hackathons before and this was my first win.
The electrical engineering student and his team programmed a robot that can patrol places like homes, malls or museums and takes photos. It uses image-recognition software and sends an alert along with a photo to the homeowner or security staff.
The team had just 24 hours to design, program and test the robot.
“We had a team of four. We just formed a team there. It’s a nice way to network with people in the tech community. It’s also a great way to learn and build something you’ve never done before.”
A total of 35 teams competed in this event.
Ramesh and his team won in three categories: best overall hack, best usage of IBM Watson, and best hardware hack.
“I was really happy and at that point, I was just grateful for the team, that everything came into place and we had a great idea.”
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“You basically get no sleep during a hackathon,” Ramesh said. “I slept for like a total of 10 minutes.