A pair of computer science students from the University of Texas at Dallas lead a team to a first-place finish in the 30-hour Smart Cities Hackathon at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Pablo Peillard
Sophomore Raviteja Lingineni and junior Pablo Sarquis Peillard won for their Alexa-based tool that maps
safety on the streets in cities, a UTD press release said.
Other team members were from Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley, the release said.
“Ravi and Pablo had the technical skills and also the leadership and communication ability to pull together a team, and set achievable deliverables in a very short time frame,” said Rod Wetterskog, assistant dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. “They had to decide on the project, assess the skills of the team members, and then build the project. Their work was very impressive and shows the caliber of students we have at UT Dallas.”
Raviteja Lingineni
Raviteja LingeniniCalled “Gotham,” the team’s product is a conversational Alexa tool that offers a safety index heat-map based on geographical parameters that are collected from OpenData along with community feedback, the release said.
The tool gathered data on outstanding arrest warrants, Las Vegas police calls for service, and code enforcement violations to produce virtually real-time information on an hourly basis, the release said.
“It was challenging,” Lingineni said of the competitions strict time constraints. “We didn’t get any sleep that night.”The team won the Best Use of Underwriter Laboratories award, besting 310 other competitors.
“They had to decide on the project, assess the skills of the team members, and then build the project.”
ROD WETTERSKOG
Lingenini said the tool empowers the public to make smarter decisions based on established threats, and it provides feedback to local government agencies so that they can improve operations and minimize community risk.
Last year, UTD awarded $20,000 cash Lingineni for his WeBe app, which uses electronic tags to connect with certain smart devices.
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