FAV team wins Mobility Hackathon with an app that works without mobile networks

Pilsen’s TechTower turned into a hub of young talent from across the country for two days. During a 24-hour Hackathon, students were tasked with tackling a digital breakdown. The winning team came from the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.

What happens when a city plunges into digital darkness in a single second? Traffic lights go out. Public transport grinds to a halt. Autonomous vehicles lose their bearings. Emergency services head into the field without data, without maps, without communication. A so-called digital breakdown or blackout was the challenge tackled by seventy university and high school students.

The contestants, forming 16 teams, could choose from four thematic areas: navigating emergency response units during a failure of digital infrastructure; keeping public transport and traffic management running during a blackout; protecting key parts of urban transport from cyberattacks and outages; and using modern technology to improve situational awareness, communication, and public information during military operations in a complex urban environment.

The University of West Bohemia was represented by 25 students from three technical faculties, along with four researchers who stepped in as mentors. The team that handled the assignment best came from the Faculty of Applied Sciences. They chose a topic influenced by Richard Lipka, also from the Faculty of Applied Sciences at UWB. “When mobile networks go down, most apps on your phone become useless. But phones are packed with antennas and can exchange information even without an internet connection. That was the students’ task to develop an app that enables direct information sharing,” Lipka explained.

“Using small radio transmitters, we connect hospitals, water utilities, or firefighters. We also designed a map-based app that works completely offline. If something happens in the field — say a bridge collapses — the dispatch center sends the information via radio to mobile phones. The app immediately recalculates the route to safety or to drinking water. The most important alerts are automatically broadcast over standard FM radio as well, so even a grandmother without a mobile phone will know that the water in her street is safe to drink again,” described Jan Vandlíček, a student from the Faculty of Applied Sciences and member of the winning team. The team, which also consisted of Jan Rychlík, Milan Janoch and Adam Bardzák, took home the first prize of 1,000 Euros.

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering was also strongly represented at the Hackathon. “These vests can measure the surrounding environment, explosive or toxic gases or radiation. They are equipped with a flashlight and a communication unit that lasts up to ten hours. We provide the hardware, and the contestants’ task is to develop the software,” explained Petr Kašpar from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at UWB. Three teams selected his topic.

“The jury evaluated not only the technical level of the solutions, but also their innovativeness, real-world applicability in crisis scenarios, and the quality of the final presentation,” said Aneta Chodorová on behalf of the organizing team. The competition was organized for the second time by the Pilsen-based SIT Port, this year in cooperation with the SPARROW project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme.

This year’s results:
🏆 1st place – RYCHLÍCI (Faculty of Applied Sciences, UWB)
🥈 2nd place – VIBECOBE (Faculty of Information Technology, CTU; Faculty of Informatics, MUNI)
🥉 3rd place – UNDEFINED (INFIS)