| Student competition finalists announced |
May 28, 2008
 Microsoft has named the finalists for its annual Embedded Development prize, part of an overall student competition called Imagine Cup 2008. The 15 teams named as finalists will spend Jul. 3-8 in Paris, where the final selection will be revealed.
Microsoft bills its Imagine Cup competition as the premier technology competition for students. Besides "Embedded Development," competition categories include:- Software design
- Game development
- "Project Hoshimi" (3D comic fantasy game)
- IT challenge
- Algorithm
- Photography
- Short film
- Interface design
This year's theme, spanning all categories, was "The Environment." The competition's Embedded Development section, more specifically, asked teams of three or four competitors, and a faculty mentor, to envision a device that would have an impact on "solving some of our world's toughest problems."
eBox-4300
(Click to enlarge) | |
Unfortunately, no details of the winning teams' projects have yet been provided. Instead, project details will be posted to the Imagine Cup website in June, according to Microsoft. Microsoft has released a list of the 15 finalist team names, institutions, and countries, as follows:- Acidrain -- National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
- Aero@PUT -- Poznan University of Technology, Poland
- Cube -- Tianjin University, China
- DCEites -- Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi, India
- Desconstruindo -- Universidade Estacio de Sa, Brazil
- Douleur Vue Ame -- Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Dwarka, New Delhi, India
- Embedded Applications Technology -- California State University, Long Beach, California
- Green Eyes -- National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
- GridVision -- University Politehnica, Bucharest, Romania
- Here Rose -- Sogang and Inha Universities, Korea
- Sun Round, Sky Around -- Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics, Ukraine
- SuperRecycling -- University of Birmingham, UK
- The Shads -- Epita, Paris, France
- Trail Blazer -- Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore
- Wings -- Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
The chosen finalists will now take their hardware, software, and written presentations on the road to Paris, where they'll compete for international publicity and cash prizes. First prize winners will receive $15,000, second place winners will receive $10,000, and third place $5,000.
  Two of this year's finalists -- Aero@PUT and DCEites -- made it into the finals in the 2007 Imagine Cup as well, providing some possible clues. Last year, the Aero@Put team fielded a project called enlEYEght (right), designed to enable early diagnosis of dyslexia. An infrared, Bluetooth-connected sensor was used to measures subjects' eye movements while they interacted with text displayed on a Pocket PC. Data was then transmitted to the eBox PC and sent over the Internet for expert analysis. The DCEites team's entry coincidentally also dealt with solving visual problems. Its "Indriyaan" project (left) was designed to read eBooks to the blind via voice synthesis, while simultaneously forming braille characters. The system could be controlled via voice command, or remotely via an integral AM receiver.
In the first round of the Embedded Development competition, which ended Jan. 31, teams presented their ideas to Microsoft in written form. For the second round, which ended last week, teams were given software including Windows CE 6.0 R2 and Visual Studio 2005 Professional, along with DM&P's eBox-4300, a compact PC that includes a 500MHz Via Eden processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, and a Type II/II CompactFlash slot. Though teams were free to add equipment or additional software, use of Windows CE and the eBox was a required element in the competition.
Further information
For more information on winners and finalists in last year's Imagine Cup competition, and how they employed Windows CE and the eBox 2300 -- a predecessor to the eBox-4300 used this time around -- see our coverage of the Imagine Cup 2007 Embedded Development section winners. For more information on the Imagine Cup 2008 entrants, see the competition website, here.
For an interesting review of the eBox-4300 published by our sister site LinuxDevices.com, see here.
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