The 2011 embeddedSPARK final was held in Redmond on June 22nd. 

The Grand prize was captured by Sebastian Londoño from Columbia with his ArS8ver project.  Sebastian is a researcher at the Universidaad ICESI in Cali. The ARS8VER project aims to reduce the number of deaths and injured people when natural disasters occur, through intelligent technologies that optimize the search time for victims and manage to get a broader picture of the disaster, which is usually not accessible due to debris and suspended particles in the air. The ARS8VER project’s second purpose is to promote biodiversity observation research. Through augmented reality and real-time interfaces can interact with the environment allowing users to pinpoint areas of difficult access to investigate or observe the fauna and flora. Finally, ARS8VER is focused on solving the problem of surveillance of buildings or places.

The Second prize was captured by Gianni Rosa Gallina, a software engineer at BEPS Engineering in Italy who invented the KitchenPal, a pantry manager that syncs over the Cloud with your phone and a web application.  We all live in a digital age, the age when computers control your music, photos, videos and entertainment. Why not let them control your meal planning, manage your recipes and track your food inventory? What about managing the foods your need to create the recipes?  Nowadays lots of alternatives exist on the Internet and can be used on PCs and/or smart phones. But they have one, big problem in common: they need a personal computer, and people who know how to use it. Is it possible to make their life easier.

The Third prize was captured by Marco Boidora, also a Software Engineer at BEPS Engineering in Italy, last year’s Grand Champion with his project Post-IT, a great Embedded Digital Blackboard brining peace at home helping synchronizing each other in their daily life. In every house there is a little blackboard where you can write memos about what is missing or what you have to do. This object is useful but often you can forget to write, update or change the things to do.  Another frequent problem is forgetting the shopping list at home! Post-IT! is the solution to remember all the small things. (Note:  The term “Post-It” is copyrighted by a major corporation.  As the result, Marco changed his project to “Digital Blackboard”.)

After the competition, Gitte-Lena organized a dinner event at the Daniel’s Broiler in Bellevue where the winners were announced.

Left to right: Gianni Rosa Gallina, Gitte-Lena Andersen, Sebastian Londoño, Marco Boidora, Olivier Bloch, Mike Hall and Samuel Phung.

After the competition, the finalists were able to enjoy some of the activities around Seattle.