The BP Imperial Hackathon

Imperial College Advanced Hackspace holds week long Hackathon on voice activated technology.

Fifteen teams participate in hackathon held by ICAH and sponsored by BP looking at potential ways BP can use voice activated technology to connect with their customers.

How can voice activated technology such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home revolutionise our future?

The BP Imperial Hackathon brought together engineers, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs and hardware hackers to come up with innovative ideas, and turn them into a reality, in one week. The Hackathon received over 120 entries with a diverse range of backgrounds, experience and expertise and included student, alumni and staff participants.

The launch event was held on June 9th in the Imperial College Business School and included key note talks from BP, Amazon Web Services and ICAH, followed by a series of team forming and bonding activities. The teams had access to expert mentors during the course of the week who they were able to discuss their ideas with, and get advice on everything from business to hardware.

The Hackathon then continued over the weekend at ICAH’s brand new space at the Invention Rooms at Imperial's White City campus. Teams spent Saturday and Sunday developing and building their projects before pitching to a panel of experts from BP, Amazon and Castrol.

 “Great way for us to access a new way of thinking about ideas that are relevant to us” Bob Flint - BP 

 Prizes were awarded across four categories: Best in show, Innovation, Customer Experience and Technology. The team that won the best in show prize, Snack Overflow, impressed the judges with their innovative use of voice activated technology to diagnose maintenance issues with your car. The customer experience prize was won by Vox-way who developed a voice activated system for groups of people travelling in separate cars, to stay connected. The Technology prize was won by Connect The Dots who developed a way to use voice activated technology with CCTV to help petrol station managers improve safety. The Innovation prize was won by The Rubber Ducks, who developed voice activated technology to stop drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

 “Today we saw 15 fundamentally different ideas that could work for us” Harry Cassar - BP

How does Imperial College Advanced Hackspace help you turn your ideas into reality?

Imperial College Advanced Hackspace is helping to transform the ideation and prototyping landscape within the University ecosystem. Starting in 2014 and now with over 2000 users, ICAH gives Imperial College students and staff access to a unique suite of prototyping technologies, workshops and labs around the college campuses. ICAH also run large-scale hackathons, training workshops, industry challenge events, bespoke mentoring support, ideation sessions and technology showcases.

The weekend hackathon was held at ICAH’s brand new space in the Invention Rooms at the White City campus. Here, a mixture of workshops and interactive spaces will allow members of the community to come together with Imperial College staff, students, alumni and partners to test out their creative ideas, and share in the excitement of research and innovation. ICAH’s new facilities will include workshop technologies, such as robotics and 3D printing, and a bio-lab, which enables synthetic biology and molecular fabrication. The Invention rooms will open later this year. ICAH have held many successful hackathons in the past including one with the global pharmaceutical firm Novartis, which focussed on new ideas to improve chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

You can get in contact with ICAH at icah@imperial.ac.uk and find out more information here.