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Winners and Highlights From The Microsoft Imagine Cup

Posted 7.14.11 at 8:36 pm 3 Comments

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Team Hermes (Ireland) - 1st Place, Software Design

Julie Beck

Team Hermes' project, also called Hermes, is an in-car device that can plug into the diagnostics port on the dashboard of any car manufactured since the year 2000. It monitors a driver's behavior, keeping track of things such as speed, RPM and G-force, and sends that information to the cloud, where it is analyzed. That data is sent to a smartphone application on both the driver and the vehicle owner's phones, so anxious parents sending their teens out for the first time can rest a little easier. The device beeps, warning drivers when they are being unsafe, and also if a dangerous road is approaching. Drivers can track their journeys on the Hermes software and see if they are improving and how they compare safety-wise to other drivers.

Team Hermes has been in talks with the Irish Road Safety Authority to develop their product. They were also approached by an American insurance company while they were in town for the Imagine Cup.

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Read the article: Brilliant Teenagers, World-Saving Tech and Dance Parties at Microsoft's Imagine Cup

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3 Comments

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reipoom

07/19/11 at 2:54 pm

makes me wonder how much of this was learned/done by the students, and how much the teachers and parents did.

I've learned from events like this that when i talk to students and ask questions like "what highlights made you go with this design" and quickly learn that the student has no clue how it works.

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salamadra

07/24/11 at 9:51 pm

Groucho Marx would say: 'Microsoft imagination is a contradiction in terms.'

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Eziodjinn

08/18/11 at 2:12 pm

Image 7 - The Note-Taker system is interesting. A further leap could help current and future generations of people that want to learn. Why don't all Universities record video/audio of their lessons? Why aren't the recorded lessons uploaded for the public? That way every human has access to all the knowledge that could want. Instead of paying 1 million dollars for 4 year tuition at Stanford, you could just download the lessons you want/need for free. Stanford is doing something along those lines with the Introduction to AI course coming up this summer. They are offering it free to anyone that wants to sign up. Why can't there be a giant database of all knowledge everyone has access to?