First-ever Global Transport Hackathon reveals bright future of the sector
After nine months and 22 regional hackathons around the world, the first-ever Y4PT Global Transport Hackathon came to its conclusion yesterday, with Team Ditch and Team upWay sharing the top prize.
Representatives of winning teams from the regional events gathered in Montréal over the weekend for a final two-day hack, where seven teams went head-to-head, developing ground-breaking solutions to today’s most serious transport problems.
Winners were announced at the Opening Ceremony of the UITP Global Public Transport Summit, and will have chance to meet with operators, authorities, and potential investors over the next three days.
Encouraging sustainable transport through gamification
The lack of transport education, especially targeted towards young children, motivated Team Ditch to develop an educational and gaming app to encourage the use of sustainable transport. The app shows different modes of transport for a selected route, and offers various points and rewards depending on whether the user cycles, drives or takes a bus.
“Kids are the future of commuting”, said team member Maria Kaimaki, “so why is most transport education focused on cars? Our app uses gamification to motivate kids and their parents to ditch cars and use sustainable transport.”
Augmented reality unlocks metro systems
Targeting the confusion that tourists often face when using foreign metro systems, Team upWay developed a navigation app that includes 3D modelling and augmented reality technology. The app also includes a feature that allows users to discover surrounding restaurants, services and entertainment, adding to upWay’s goal of unlocking cities to visitors.
“Our app uses augmented reality, like Pokémon Go, which lets tourists actually see where metro stops are located through their phone’s camera. This helps users overcome language barriers and gets them to use public transport in a new city”, said Jonathan Adiaheno.
Clean air and optimised delivery take out silver and bronze
Second place was awarded to Team Air4, who created a mobile measuring station for air pollution, and an app that uses data from the device to calculate travel routes with the lowest pollution rate. The device and app provide an affordable solution to combating air pollution, a critical issue that claims millions of lives each year.
Team uDeliver took home bronze, with their innovative delivery service app. With the aim of reducing the number of delivery vehicles on the road, uDeliver developed a solution that allows users to make deliveries on behalf of companies, in the vein of food delivery services like UberEats. The app connects users to deliveries based on their existing commutes, resulting in a more sustainable and efficient delivery system.
Y4PT’s hackathons are part of InnovHub. Click on the yellow bulb and find out more innovative initiatives.
