UWB student and three high school students won the Mobility Hackathon with blood transport by drone

Urban traffic simulations, isochronic maps and ethical hackers. Half of February belonged to the SIT Port of Pilsen Hackaton event, which this year focused on mobility. It was the largest event of this type since 2016 and was attended by student programmers from UWB and CTU.

The team consisting of Jan Ocelík, a student of the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (FAV UWB) and three high school students celebrates success. They won against nine other teams of students from both UWB and the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU). A total of 72 university students took part in the Hackaton event in Pilsen on 14 and 15 February, solving challenges in the field of urban mobility.

This was the first time that this topic was addressed in Pilsen as part of the Hackathon event. Topics covered include, for example, automatic evaluation of traffic situations, traffic simulation and prediction, isochronic maps showing the distance achievable in real time or blood transport by drone. The winning team dealt with blood transport.

"The winner was a team of students from the University of West Bohemia and local high schools who are active members of our TechTower community. They have their own places at SIT Port Cowork, participate in many events and are talented young programmers. During the hackathon, they focused on blood transport using a drone, prepared a web and mobile application and dealt with the topic in depth with a great emphasis on safety," said Daniel Kůs, Pilsen City Councillor for Smart Cities and Business Support.

The second place went to a team that was completely composed of students from the FAV UWB. They dealt with the analysis of data from sensors sensing the width of the street. From the data obtained, it is possible to determine, for example, whether the street is crossed by the emergency services or excessive loads.

Another successful team was the national team of ethical hackers Czech Cyber Team in the Hack Skoda challenge, which managed to find certain system vulnerabilities. Škoda Auto intends to address these further with the ethical hackers.

"Pilsen is a clear pioneer in the field of autonomous mobility, as evidenced by the deployment of C-ITS technology at several intersections in Bory and the Lochotín housing estate forming a test polygon. In the TechTower Technology Park we are building an autonomous mobility laboratory, the Mobility Innovation Lab, where young people can bastle and test their ideas in an accessible urban environment and on urban data," said Luděk Šantora, Director of the Information Technology Administration of the City of Pilsen.

SIT Port project managers Anna Čudáková and Hana Řehořová said that the Mobility Hackathon took a year to prepare. "We are of course delighted with this huge interest, but we are even more pleased with the experience, knowledge and contacts that the participants took away from the hack," they agreed.

The partners of the event were the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague, the Faculty of Transport of the Czech Technical University in Prague and the company Operátor ICT, a.s.