Born into tech: Bulgaria’s TUES students aim to disrupt future of IT
Some of Bulgaria’s most promising IT talents of the future demonstrated they are not afraid bringing their bold ideas to life. Students from TUES, Bulgaria’s leading high tech school, presented their solutions to some of the challenges of today’s world, including in elderly care, smart mobility, future of education, and engineering.
A total of 69 projects from 130 students competed for the first prize in TUES FEST 2021, the school’s annual tech competition. Trending Topics SEE was there to support them as a media partner and member of the media jury. And boy, were we impressed!
It was a tough choice, but we picked three projects with a vision to showcase the achievements of Bulgaria’s IT generation of the future.
+++TUES FEST 2021: Bulgaria’s leading tech school supports student innovation+++
Smart pill box helps patients with dementia
12th-grader Georgi Korchakov showed his Smart Medical Box, a project for a smart auntomatic Pill Medicine Organizer to monitor the safe use of medicines for elderly and dementia patients. The idea came when Georgi`s grandma, who suffered from diabetes and dementia, began to mix her pills which further aggravated her condition.
“My father and I started wondering if there was a better way to dispense pills and searched online for smart pill boxes but we were not very lucky. I got passionate about robotics and met some other students and teachers who helped us develop our idea,” Georgi told Trending Topics SEE.
The smart box has 7 units for each day of the week. These units have four compartments each for morning, noon, evening and night. The compartments open based on a model set through a user interface. The box also has compartments for insulin pens (day and night). When the time comes to administer a shot, the right compartment opens and the box alerts the patient. The project is now completed and despite some software, hardware and mechanical challenges, experts and potential investors were quite impressed.
“The best way [to improve our product] is to get feedback from a patient’s family or caregiver, who gets alerts when the patient skips a pill. They are then able to remotely open the respective compartment,” Georgi explained.
Find me a parking lot!
A mobile app that scans available parking lots and navigates the driver to them won the media jury award at TUES FEST 2021. ESPEES, developed by 12th-grader Veselin Angelov reduces driving time and harmful emissions. Veselin admitted that the hardest part of the project was to develop the mobile app and synchronize it with Sofia’s municipal and city infrastructure. “I am planning on developing a sensor and a system that monitors parking lots, as well as enhance the app and the server,” Veselin told Trending Topics SEE.
Eleggo helps people with impaired mobility learn
12th-graders Angel Penchev, Bogdan Vironov, Madlen Sarkisyan, Miroslav Mirchev and Simeon Georgiev presented their vision for the future of learning for people with impaired mobility, and actually for everyone who dreams of being able to control their devices with their thought. Their project called Eleggo is a programmable brain computer interface that uses electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain waves and perform tasks such as detecting hand movements, targeted thinking, etc. “In 2010, some 82.2 million keyboard and mice were thrown away globally, and only 10% were recycled. This made us think about an alternative for a greener future,” Simeon Georgiev told Trending Topics SEE.
The interface is made for people with impaired mobility who cannot use any peripheral devices. Some of the big names in IT, robotics, and biomedical engineering are also working on this idea. “We wanted to develop an EEG helmet, an AI technology that finds user thought models and an app to code these thoughts. The most challenging part was producing the hardware. We were able to create the helmet but finishing the circuit board to read the mind waves will take some time,” Simeon added. The team is planning to create a database of info to feed the AI.
You can check all projects showcased at TUES FEST 2021 in the events YouTube chanel
+++Edutech: Kick-started by COVID 19, Bulgaria leads in digital education+++
