| Imagine Cup 2008 winners announced |
Jul. 09, 2008
 Microsoft has announced the winning teams in its annual Embedded Development contest, part of the overall student competition called Imagine Cup 2008. While there were meant to be only three winners, teams from Ireland and China tied for second place, resulting in four awards, says Microsoft.
The software giant has billed 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."
The 15 finalists in this section -- detailed in our previous coverage, here -- spent Jul. 3-8 in Paris with their hardware, software, and written presentations, competing for international publicity and cash prizes. First prize winners had been scheduled to receive $15,000, second place winners $10,000, and third place winners $5,000; in yesterday's announcement, Microsoft did not specify how prize monies will now be divided.
eBox-4300
(Click to enlarge) | |
Finalists in the Embedded Development contest had been given 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.
First place winner
The first place winner is Team Trail Blazers from Nanyang Polytechnic. Team members James Pinto, Shi Ben Yong, Denver Lim, and Hu Shuhan are shown below with their award-winning project, EMS (Environmental Monitoring System). Said to be aimed at commercial building owners or managers, EMS consists of an autonomous robot that is designed to combat indoor air pollution. The device samples air temperature and quality, additionally capturing video, and sends data to a remote base station via WiFI, ZigBee, or HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access).
Team Trail Blazers and its robotic Environmental Monitoring System
Although hardware specifics were not provided, the robot apparently has the eBox-4300 on board, along with an off-the-shelf webcam. Microsoft software technologies employed include the following, according to the team's page on Microsoft's Imagine Cup website:- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Vista Business
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0
- SQL Server 2005
- Visual Studio .NET 2008
- Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Platform Builder
- .NET Framework 3.5
- Windows Presentation Foundation
Second place winner(s)
As mentioned above, Microsoft's judges found themselves unable to choose between two contenders for second place. Therefore, there was a tie between team AcidRain, from the National University of Ireland, and team Wings, from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.
Team AcidRain and its Voila (vegetable oil automobile) system
Team AcidRain -- whose members Brian Byrne, Aodhan Coffey, Karl O'Dwyer are shown above with its winning entry -- created a diesel-powered car that is said to be capable of running on any plant oil. The "Voila" (vegetable oil automobile) system constantly monitors and adjusts engine temperature to cater for the fuel of choice, selected by the driver using an onboard eBox-4300 and a touchscreen display. Hardware components include various Phidgets, according to the team page on Microsoft's Imagine Cup website.
The team garnered attention in the Irish press by driving its modified Opel from Ireland to Paris, while noting that its use of sunflower oil as fuel made the trip "carbon neutral." AcidRain even posted realtime GPS updates of its progress on its website, here.
Not to be outdone, team Wings -- whose members are Shibiao Xu, Junjie Li, Zhongjie Wang, Lei Yan, below -- fielded a project called AquaMarine, a real-time data acquisition and processing system intended to detect oil spills. The system would use a series of buoys, infrared imagery, and wireless networking to minimize the negative impact of any accidents.
Team Wings
While hardware specifics were not provided, team members wrote on Microsoft's Imagine Cup website that the biggest challenge in the project was finding an optimal size for the buoys it requires: "If these are too big, they cannot achieve accurate data acquisition. If they are too small, they cannot bear the awful environment in the ocean."
Third place winner
Team Aero@PUT -- consisting of Piotr Kryger, Mikolaj Malaczynski, Jakub Pawlowski, and Piotr Slezak from the Poznan University of Technology in Poland -- was a finalist in the 2007 Imagine Cup. This time, it scored a third-place win with "Eopteron," a small, self-navigating electric helicopter (below).
Team Aero@PUT's self-navigating helicopter
Equipped with accelerometers, a compass, an altimeter, GPS, a thermal imaging camera, and other equipment, the Eopteron aims to "monitor dynamic environmental processes" over a variety of landscapes. The ground-based eBox-4300 would be the "brains of the system," according to the team's page on Microsoft's Imagine Cup website, though the means of communications with the helicopter was not specified.
S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the developer division at Microsoft, said the "Imagine Cup provides a forum for students around the world to explore new ways to use the power of software to help address some of the world’s toughest challenges. The high caliber of the students and their projects is evidence of the high level of innovation seen in the student community today, with a clear potential for real-world impact."
Further information
According to Microsoft, winners in the 2008 Imagine Cup were selected from a pool of 370 students, 124 teams, and 61 countries or regions. The 2009 Imagine Cup will be held in Cairo, Egypt in July.
For details on the 2009 competition, or more details on the 2008 contest winners, visit Microsoft's Imagine Cup site, here.
For more information on winners and finalists in 2007's Imagine Cup competition, and how they employed Windows CE and the eBox 2300 -- a predecessor to the eBox-4300 used in 2008 -- see our coverage of the Imagine Cup 2007 Embedded Development section winners, here.
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