Finalists Selected for West Lafayette Smart City Challenge
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Organizers of the West Lafayette Smart City Challenge have awarded a total of $15,000 to three finalists, including two from Purdue University. According to Purdue, the winning teams proposed IoT solutions or software applications to improve safety for road users who navigate high-traffic corridors and intersections during major seasonal events.
In addition to the Purdue teams, a startup from Virginia was named a finalist. The West Lafayette Smart City Challenge offers student and startup teams the opportunity to compete for funding and the chance to pilot their idea with the city of West Lafayette.
“One of the most incredible benefits of being a college community is the partnership between the university and the city,” West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis said. “We in the city of West Lafayette have the opportunity to serve as a living laboratory by testing new technologies and ideas to make our community safe for visitors and citizens alike. We are very excited about the ideas that the three finalists have developed, and we look forward to seeing these ideas put to practice.”
The winning teams and their project concepts include:
- Metaverse Technologies Inc. – creating a smart intersection beacon platform that will anonymously collect data from intersections and user apps and process the information to deliver messages and signal directives back to the intersection and roadway users.
- Communicative LED Pathways – an Internet of Things-based audio and visual platform that is working to improve situational awareness of nonmotor vehicle roadway users to local conditions at individual intersections.
- Traffic Real-time Analysis Weather System – an Internet-of-Things-based street sign platform that delivers automated artificial intelligence/machine learning derived messages based on various roadway conditions.
Organizers said the finalists were selected for their solutions’ “potential impact, viability, scalability and sustainability.”
Purdue says each team will receive $5,000 in financial support, as well as gain access to historical datasets and real-time data generated by West Lafayette’s network of Miovision street cameras and sensors. The teams will also be provided working and project space at the Convergence Center’s Innovation Lab at Discovery Park District at Purdue.
The university says the teams will showcase their prototypes in May. The winning team will receive an additional $10,000 to test its solution on West Lafayette roadways from May to December.