The AI Hackathon that kicked off last Tuesday closed off with nine elevator pitches Wednesday afternoon. An idea to improve the flow of people on campus by the SRVU team ended up winning.
A mere twenty-four hours after the start, each team pitched their AI-based solution for a problem they’ve identified at the university. After eight elevator pitches, a surprise ninth team comes running in at the last moment. “If we disqualified teams for being late, we basically would have to disqualify all teams as they were all slightly late”, explained Joep van Dijk who organized and presented the hackathon.
After a short deliberation, VU Amsterdam’s innovation manager Axel Jansen announces that team SRVU is the hackathon’s victor with their plan to tackle a major gripe at the university: jam-packed hallways and full elevators. The team thinks they can improve the flow on campus by using artificial intelligence to measure and predict how people move around.
Accessible classrooms
Besides reducing crowds, the SRVU team also hopes to provide more space for study associations and to connect people with disabilities to more accessible classrooms. The team gets three thousand euros, intended to spend on further developing the project.
Team Andy comes in second with their way to improve the reliability of AI-generated texts, garnering a 1500 euro reward. And team Dot.dot.dot wins 500 euros for their project that identifies high dropout rates. On top of the monetary rewards, the Demonstrator Lab has offered them assistance.