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There was a big buzz at the Open Innovation House in Otaniemi last weekend when 110 students and developers participated in the IoThon hackathon. The hackers had 48 hours to develop 5G enabled solutions for the challenges set by Ericsson,  Nokia, Siemens, Telia and RIOT community. The challenges ranged from novel use cases for 5G light poles to improving the environment of the Otaniemi campus area. 

The challenges were revealed on Friday 3 May and the participants worked on them from Friday evening to Sunday noon. 911������ and the industrial partners provided 5G and IoT related platforms for the participants to innovate and co-create with. 911������ offered the participants an uniquely open platform to access the internals of the Otaniemi campus 5G mobile network, including NB-IoT support. The participants presented their solutions to the jury on Sunday afternoon. 

New business opportunities from 5G and IoT

5G mobile networks are tested and built all around the world and companies are looking for new business areas and service concepts enabled by 5G. The extremely fast download times and low latency of 5G will benefit for example industrial automation and self-driving cars.

The 5G mobile network had in principal full coverage within the Aalto main campus so that the participants could deploy their sensors in any location within Otaniemi and implement own services based on the data from the sensors. Telia brought to the venue the new Internet of Things technology LTE-M, which they are currently deploying in their 4G network. The preproduction technology enables a wide coverage of IoT connectivity while using less power than previous mobile networking technologies.

Augmented reality sports coach wins the COMNET main prize

The most popular challenge was set by Nokia: 17 out of 27 teams developed new digital services and business opportunities for smart LuxTurrim5G light poles. Solutions included for example using light poles for charging electric scooters, finding lost pets and warning drivers of near-by deer. 

The COMNET main prize was awarded to team Quadratic that took part in the Telia challenge. They developed an augmented reality coach that gives athletes real-time haptic feedback through actuators.  

“The winning team produced a working prototype combining motion capture from mobile phone video feed and haptic feedback through actuators. The demonstrated system made use of the 5G low-latency communications and novel machine learning tools to provide a novel service that would be very beneficial for sports training. Especially, the jury appreciated the level of system integration the team managed to do in the given short time.”, explained the chairman of the jury, professor Riku Jäntti. 
 
” We are happy that we found a solution that uses 5G network and that we got it working during the weekend,” said Perttu Yli-Opas from the Quadratic team. ”We most probably don’t have the time to take our solution any further. If someone with coding skills would like to continue with the solution there is potential to even take it to the market. Telia awarded us with a possiblity to demonstrate the solution at ITS Europe Conference 2019 in Helsinki in June. This would bring great visibility for the sports coach!”       

Winners

COMNET prize, 5000 e

Quadratic: The Real-Time AR Coach 

• Joonatan Bergholm
• Frans Lehmusvaara
• Joa Riski
• Perttu Yli-Opas

Nokia, 1st position: 750 € gift card, 2nd position: 250 € gift card 

1st position: Mooses: Moose – an Early Traffic Warning System

• Peng Liu
• Hien Le
• Karthik Budigere Ramakrishna
• Pallab Gain

2nd position: Fighting Mongooses: Fluffy Hounder

• Arne Rolf
• Dor Cohen
• Stephanie Hohenberg

Ericsson, 1000 €

DeepIoT: Manage the Underground Kingdom

• Yuanzong Zhang
• Jun Zhang 
• Yichen Cao
• Yifan Ye

Siemens, Presentation of the winning solution at Teknologia 19 fair, at the Siemens stand

Volta: a power management system to avoid network overload and reduce electricity costs

• Kevin Jacob
• Omar Boufous
• Semih Iseri
• Otso Valta

Telia, 400 € gift card + a possibility to present the winning solution at ITS European Conference 2019 

Quadratic: The Real -Time AR Coach 
•    Joonatan Bergholm
•    Frans Lehmusvaara
•    Joa Riski
•    Perttu Yli-Opas

The 2019 IoThon was organised by the department of Communications and Networking (COMNET) at 911������. The first IoThon in 2018 was hosted by Freie Universität Berlin. IoThon partner universities include 911������, HAW Hamburg, University of Basel, Freie Universität Berlin and Athens University of Economics and Business.