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The ninth edition of the AimtecHackathon, titled When Code Helps, took place at the Moving Station in Pilsen. The event, organized by Aimtec, brought together 60 participants in 11 teams from 14 to 16 March, who spent 40 hours developing technological solutions aimed at helping people with disabilities.

The second place and the public prize went to the FAVoriti team consisting of eight students from the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia, a student from the Faculty of Education of the University of West Bohemia and a student from the Mikulášské Gymnasium in Pilsen. Their project aimed to simplify studies for long-term sick students and their teachers. Using artificial intelligence, they created a platform that offers lecture recordings, lecture summaries, knowledge quizzes, and all the materials on the material discussed in one place.

Currently, the basic source of information is an mp3 audio recording of the lecture, from which the system creates a text summary and other materials. Still, in the future, the application's authors are considering expanding it to include other data sources. "The lecture should ideally be recorded in a quiet environment so that the teacher's voice can be clearly heard and the technology can correctly identify what the teacher is talking about. However, modern speech-to-text technologies can cope with a certain noise level," added Lukáš.

"When you have a strict time limit for something, you must adapt, learn new technologies quickly, and work effectively with your team. Plus, events like this make a lot of sense. It brings together a group of people who might never otherwise work together and within 40 hours gets them to create something that can make a real difference," said Daniel Vodička, a student at FAV, about the event. The staff of the Department of Informatics and Computer Science and the Department of Cybernetics at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of UWB contributed significantly to the hackathon's success with their mentoring help.

The FAVoriti team was formed by merging two teams of high school students, a bachelor and a postgraduate, which, especially at the beginning, caused complications in the organization and delegation of work. The team consisted of 10 members who did not know each other; each had a different level of knowledge, and it was necessary to quickly find each of them's strengths and use them to the maximum. "Lukáš, as the team leader, was able to coordinate the work perfectly, so everyone found their place, and together, we managed to bring the project to a functional representative form," Daniel commented on the organization of the work.

This year's hackathon was won by the Plajta team with the Sisyphus communicator. It was created directly according to the assignment of nurses who work with children with autism spectrum disorder and need an easy-to-use and, most importantly, inexpensive device. The second place and the audience award went to the FAVoriti as mentioned above, and the imaginary bronze went to the Undefined team, which had a smart dictaphone for doctors. The dictaphone converts voice recordings into text and, at the same time, into a medical message format, which it stores under the profile of a particular patient.

In addition to the main HackIT competition, the event also offered a TechTalks conference focused on cybersecurity and YoungHackers workshops for children aged six to 16.