Imagine Cup: Team WalkSafe walked to an Honorable Mention in the Innovation Category!
Imagine Cup 2015 has been announced. If you are a Canadian Student and not participating in the Global Student Technology Competition, you are missing out! In this blog post, I will discuss specific details about the Innovation Category.
Imagine Cup Started with the Pitch Video Challenge. In this challenge, students from all over the world pitch their idea in a 3 minute video with the winning team given $3000. Today, I want to share the Honorable Mention in the Innovation Category, Team WalkSafe from Queens University.
What did Team WalkSafe build?
Team WalkSafe built a phone application that combines the power of smartphone technology and social media to create an interactive network designed to provide a safer walking and commuting experience for its users.
The app works by asking the user to enter their intended destination, select an estimated arrival time and then choose a trusted network, (i.e. friends, family, etc.) to share their journey with. Using the Maps API, the app tracks the user’s location as they walk and allows the walker’s trusted network to see whether the user is safely on their way. Once the walker makes it to their destination, WalkSafe’s automatic check-in feature notifies the trusted network that the user has safely arrived. The best part of this feature is that the walker does not have to worry about forgetting to tell their friends or family that they have safely arrived at their destination, the app does it for them.
If the user does not make it to their destination on time, the trusted network will be alerted via their smartphones and will be prompted to take action. The network will be able to see the walker’s last known location and battery level and will be able to decide on the best course of action, like calling the walker, or if appropriate, the police.
To help keep as many people as safe as possible, WalkSafe will be developed for the three major phone platforms: iOS, Android and Windows.
What technologies did Team WalkSafe use?
The front-end of WalkSafe is being developed in Cordova (a platform for developing a single application for all phone platforms) and using the phones’ native languages. Visual Studio, Android Studio and Xcode are the main development platforms. On the backend, the project is powered by node.js and backed by a MySQL database, with a REST API connecting all users.
Who is Team WalkSafe?
Riley Karson – Software Design (Queen's University)
Julie Lycklama – Software Design (Queen's University)
Anastasiya Tarnouskaya – Biomedical Computing (Queen's University)
Chris Thomas – Software Design (Queen's University)
Team WalkSafe, good luck with the rest of Imagine Cup 2015 and it’s not too late for you to join too! We want to see more teams participating from schools across Canada!
What’s the Canadian Innovation Prize?
The 1st place team in the Innovation Competition will win one (1) 30 minute Skype Call with a recruiter from Microsoft Corporate, AND one (1) 30 minute Skype conversation with Aron Solomon, AND one (1) 30 minute Skype call with Nathan Monk.
If you win in Canada, we will send one team to the World finals in Seattle Washington to compete for the Imagine Cup and $50,000! It could be you!
Don’t miss out!
You can find all details such as important dates, registration and rules at www.imaginecup.ca. Please reach out to ImagineCupCanada@microsoft.com or me @RamiSayar if you have any questions. Looking forward to all your submissions and good luck!