Sweden-India Mobility Hackathon to tackle global transport issues

It was a 42-hour hackathon wherein 500 participants pored over global issues transport problems like emissions, traffic accidents and ineffective traffic to co-create and execute futuristic solutions for global mobility. Students, entrepreneurs, developers, designers, engineers, and mobility experts participated in the first Sweden-India Mobility Hackathon that was organised by the Swedish Institute and supported by the Consulate General of Sweden in Mumbai and the Swedish Embassy in New Delhi.  The teams were guided by 76 mentors from both countries - professors, leaders, engineering, transport and creative experts - to further develop their solutions.

A 48-member jury picked the most promising solutions for the future. Here’s a look at the winning ideas that might soon change the way we move.

The Right Truck

Team: Kushal Chinchanikar, Gaurav Thakur, Prabuddha Tamhane, Pavitr Kochar

An entry for the ‘Sustainable Logistics’ category, the idea of The Right Truck is to create an app which allows the user (a logistics company employee) to enter the source and destination of the journey of the transport consignment. The user will also enter the list of trucks possessed by the company and their age. The web app will find out the distance between the two locations, gradient, average velocity, altitude, and calculate real-time traffic factors. The app will then assign the most fuel-efficient truck, i.e., the newest truck available in the fleet, for that particular consignment.

The DataTor:

Team: Balaji Nagaraj Kumar, Deepasundar Ponnusamy, Chaithanya A, Joshyka Jothi Singaaravadivelu, Biju Jude Poovattil Tomy

Think of connected devices and the data that it accumulates. We are completely unaware of how much data we share and what exactly we share. It is also difficult to control the data sharing of what to share and what not based on our own privacy reasons. This will lead to serious privacy breach to connected cars potentially exploiting the infrastructures for the car data monetisation. DataTor takes Data Privacy for Connected Vehicles seriously and will put the data control back to the driver on what to share and what not - all this pretty much instantaneously.

Pedestrian Road Cross Assist System:

Team: Harshad Sawant, Venugopal KG, Jeffrin Samuel Moses, Vamika Aggarwal

According to World Health Organisation, around 250,000 pedestrians are involved in accidents every year. Pedestrian Road Cross Assist System will assist the pedestrians to cross the road either from the front or from the rear side of stationary vehicle. The system consists of front and rear radars which will scan the approaching vehicles from the front or and rear side. Camera/sensors mounted on front and rear side of vehicle detect pedestrians and warns them if it is safe to cross the road or not based on radar data and audio/visual signalling to the pedestrians.

Super-Fast Modular Charger and Intelligent Battery Management System for EVs:

Team: Shrikant Mali, Steffy James, Sourav Ghosh

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are the key to a sustainable future. However, battery health protection is the most neglected while charging different types of batteries. The Super-Fast Modular Charger will accelerate electrification for huge EVs, such as buses and trucks. The idea of this working prototype of the Intelligent Battery Management System is fast charging, modular and hot swappable design, connected vehicle (fleet management) and battery health monitoring and range prediction.

The Accident Predictor:

Team: Krishna Kumar C, Venkataraman B, Santosh Shet, Stanly K Chacko

The Accident Predictor will collect historic accident data from the authorities and alert the drivers about accident-prone roads. The idea of The Accident Predictor has been categorised around two different persona:  1. Driver, and 2. Fleet Owner/Fleet Administrator. For the drivers, the Predictor will identify accident hotspots with help from road authorities, analyse behaviours’ such as harsh breaking to predict accident hotspots which are not yet reported by road authorities, define zones (geofence) for such hotspots, set the maximum speed of the vehicle when they approach these hotspots (speeds defined as part of zone management). For the Fleet Owner/Administrator Persona, the Predictor will use factors such as vehicle type, age of vehicle, driver-age, road/weather conditions etcetera to develop a model to predict the driver risk score.

Smart CO2 Calculator for Smart Vehicles:

Team: S Shalini, Darshan Vithlani, Jaimin Desai, Kashika Wanchoo

Why should we monitor CO2 Emissions? That is the need of the hour. It is very important to have an Emission report so that the customers can follow up on how much emissions their vehicles create and are affecting the environment. The Smart CO2 Calculator will give the end-user a complete and brief view on Change in Fuel Efficiency and Impact on CO2 emitted from their vehicles. Along with this, the user can track on how the fuel efficiency is changing from base year to current year.