SRL Members Place First at 2015 TAMUHack

The Sketch Recognition Lab and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond are excited to announce and congratulate Jaideep Ray, Pawan Singh, and Ankur Gupta on coming in first place at 2015 TAMUHack! As a grand prize, each team member received a 3D printer.

The 2015 hackathon event was the largest attended hackathon at Texas A&M University. It was sponsored by Walmart, IBM Bluemix, National Instruments, AT&T, NSA, Microsoft, State Farm, and Bazaarvoice, and CapitalOne. While Microsoft and an outside organization hosted a few similar events previously, TAMUHack officially started in the summer of 2014 as a student organization run by Rafael Cesar and a few of his friends.

([From Right to Left] Ray, Gupta, and Singh at TAMUHack - picture source: TAMUHack Facebook)

"The hackathon for us is just the tip of the iceberg," Cesar, who is the residing president of TAMUHack, stated. "I'm now completing my second year in computer science, and I had done some research prior to switching. What got me the most excited about the idea of entering the major was what I read online about motivated students working on innovative side projects, honing their skills outside the classroom."

However, what came as a disappointment to Cesar was the lack of collaboration of students working on extracurricular projects of any kind. So, he decided to take as many extra courses and to go to as many outside events as he could. He quickly saw the advantages of doing so - "not just from a skill-set perspective, but also from a networking job prep perspective." His experience with outside events and courses inspired Cesar to start the event at TAMU and introduce it to his peers.

"It's also awesome to see how much it's grown since I started going to hackathons around the country two years ago with my friend," Cesar commented. "It started off as just me and him, and now we take busloads of people to them."

The hackathon events typically don't have a defined theme or prompt for teams to work on - giving creativity completely over to the hands of the team. Partner companies take the stage during the opening ceremonies to demonstrate their technologies and announce to contestants whether or not they have prizes for working with their technologies or gadgets. After the ceremony, participating teams have 24 hours to work on their TAMUHack projects. Free food is served during the event. Software engineers from different companies stay for the competition and act as mentors to groups that need help or pointers.

"At the end, the teams that submit projects are then assigned tables across the venue and exhibit their projects to the judges that are walking around, science fair style," Cesar explained. "The judges are split into a number of groups which get assigned specific sections to go judge. They come back with their top teams and a top 10 are selected who demo in front of everyone in attendance."

(Ray, Singh, and Gupta presenting at TAMUHack - picture source: TAMUHack Facebook)

 

From the demonstrations, the top three places are awarded. The ending ceremonies also include companies announcing their winners of prizes for the teams that have used their products.

"Hackathons are great fun!" Jaideep Ray commented on his motivation to partake in 2015 TAMUHack.

The projects created at 2015 TAMUHack were diverse: one team's creation used leap motion and machine learning to help tutor sign language, another made a Tron-like game environment for the Occulus Rift, others, still, created projects for music, voice controlled video games, motion controllers for drones, and communication networks of emergency communication.

The SRL team made an application called Budget Ride.

"We built an app with Google Maps and Uber API which would suggest possible public transportation options available to you in routes where there are no Uber, or where Uber is really expensive," Ray explained his team's project. "The app would compute the best possible route in terms of convenience and cost from a source to destination for you."

Congratulations, again, to Jaideep Ray, Pawan Singh, and Ankur Gupta!! To learn more about TAMUHack, visit their website, here.

As a conclusion, Cesar offers a pitch for future participants of TAMUHack:

"When you walk up to a company at a career fair, or anywhere else where you are approaching representatives to get a job, for a technical position, they'll slightly glance at your resume and then ask, 'what projects have you, or are you, working on?'. Going to hackathons and getting involved in the technology community with TAMUHack kick-starts you in getting out of your comfort zone, and taking on projects you're interested in outside of the classroom setting. Even if it's not with TAMUHack, identify the problems that keep you out at night, and then set out to go solve them."