Stuttgart. How do health and mobility fit together? Will autonomous cars become moving fitness rooms? How do smart homes communicate with our cars? At the first Daimler hackathon this year around 50 students worked on the topic health & mobility as well as smart home & mobility. The aim of the party for coders and web designers was to develop and program innovative ideas within 24 hours and verify their potential with the jury. The term hackathon combines the words „hacking“ and „marathon“ what explains why fun with coding, perseverance, team spirit and little sleep are part of the program.
Hack.Stuttgart: team “Inceptor” has won with the topic “health”
The idea of team “Inceptor” with the headline “Infotainment can be great, Infotainment can be dangerous” convinced the jury the most. What is it about? The developed “Infotaintment manager” prevents accidents by utilizing data from the driver’s vital signs and surroundings. For example messages and calls will be held back from the driver until his/her stress level goes down.
“So many exciting ideas have been created here. This project won because it solves a day-to-day issue, by preventing accidents caused by stress or distraction”, said Anke Kleinschmit, member of the jury and Head of Corporate Research & Sustainability. “The digitalization also affects the topics vitality & fitness and we have so much new opportunities to integrate it in the car. In the future you can do muscle training for example when you are stuck in traffic, take a powernap by the push of a button or simply measure your vital signs in the car.”
Hack for health was also the topic the contendors who won second and third prize focused on. The team life guard secured second prize for their idea of measuring the vitals of the driver and providing correspondig solutions. For example, it provides automatic emergency redirection in the situation of microsleep. The team Road Joy has won the third prize for their idea of mearuing the stress level of the driver and co-drivers and suggesting the appropriate driving behavior. In order to implement these ideas, the students received hardware-kits which for instance included microprozessors, sensors, legos and other components for prototyping. “It’s very impressive to see how the students ‘live’ digitalization.” They’ve developed new approaches and ideas with huge potential in just 24 hours. That’s an indication that there are well-trained and talented programmers here in Germany – we just have to find them. And that’s exactly the aim of Daimler when doing hackathons“, said Daimlers Head of Strategy, Wilko Stark.
International hackathon series with DigitalLife@Daimler
After recent hackathons, Daimler is going into the next round with the current international hackathon series and the lead-topic digitalisation. Events like this are a valuable platform to get in touch with potential talents all over the world and show them what kind of exiting topics they can work on at Daimler.
The initiative DigitalLife@Daimler was founded 2011 to establish a new culture of innovation to combine the strenghts of the global company with the strengths of startups: more founding spirit, more risk-taking and more speed. Therefore, events like hackathons are where ideas can be generated together and implemented quickly.
Further information about the hackathon series is available online:
https://www.digitallife-campus.com/en/hackstuttgart
