A water bottle that knows how much you've drunk...

Imperial College Undergraduates compete in Cisco's Switch-Up Challenge.

Cisco (alongside GTI Recruiting Solutions) launched the Switch-Up Challenge in September, a competition aimed at UK university students asking them come up with an idea to tackle a social or environmental issue using the Internet of Everything. Eight teams of undergraduates competed at Cisco’s UK headquarters.

First year undergraduates Imperialists_SK were declared the winners of this round with their brilliant idea – ‘Wells’ which consists of a ‘smart cap’, which fits any standard plastic bottle, and a smartphone app. The app measures the amount of water flowing out through the bottle’s seal using sensors in the cap. It provides the user information about their daily recommended water intake, and logs their progress. Imperialists_SK consists of Martin Ferianc from Electrical Engineering, and friends from Computing (Daniel Zvara) and Bioengineering (Miroslav Gasparek). Martin and his team will now compete in the final for the chance to win a week-long trip to Cisco’s global headquarters in California.

Runners up were Creative Innovators of the Empire, a team made up entirely of students from our Department. They came up with a device that enables accurate pollutant trends to be shared in real time.