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Dnipro hosted a family festival of robotics and innovations
16 June, 12:04

Dnipro’s Makarov National Aerospace Educational Center of Youth recently hosted Best Robo Fest, a festival of robotics and innovations. The two-day event comprised an exhibit of technical novelties, robots’ competitions and races, master classes for children by Ukrainian inventors, and a contemporary art exhibit.

First there was a lecture by Mykhailo Riabokon, innovations manager at the company Noosphere and cofounder of the Noosphere Engineering School based on Dnipropetrovsk National University.

He spoke about successful projects of the research and engineering center, including:

♦ ArtOS program system of computerized artillery fire control designed jointly with the Ukrainian army officer Yaroslav Sherstiuk. Using this system, the military will reduce the time interval between target spotting and opening fire;

♦ “My police” mobile attachment designed jointly with Dmytro Podvorchansky, a former employee at the Dnipro-1 regiment. The users of this attachment will get instructions about working with patrolmen, a map of police stations and other specialized services; will be able to assess the work of a patrolman, promptly call a crime scene unit; and take part in the active witness system. Riabokon says the attachment will be presented to Dnipro residents on August 24.

The cofounder of Noosphere Engineering School also made public the center’s immediate plans and events, including the launching of crowd-funding campaigns on the international platform Kickstarter for the center’s student designs. Now the engineering school has five projects at the stage of development and prototype improvement, which belong to the Internet of things, smart house elements, etc.

Best Robo Fest visitors had an opportunity to hear finalists and winners of the Vernadsky Challenge national competition of engineering startups in 2015 and 2016, finalists of NASA Space Apps Challenge 2016, active entrepreneurs in the field of engineering designs, and academics.

For example, the Bioton project, a sphygmographic system for functional diagnostics of cardiovascular diseases, took 3rd place at the Vernadsky Challenge 2016 competition. According to Khmelnytsky National University Professor Serhii Pidchenko, the head of the designers’ team, the device employs the cutting-edge methods of measuring and will be several times as cheap as its European analogues. Today, the team has a working prototype which was tested on diagnosed patients. A full-fledged Bioton will cost about 800 euros, but the developers are also planning to make a simplified household version.

The Vernadsky Challenge 2015 prize winner is a long-term multifunctional polymer bandaging material. In the words of the project developer Bohdan Murashevych, an associate professor at Ukrainian State Chemical Technology University, the material needs easy-to-find raw materials, has a simple technology and a smart action, which will let it be used in field medicine, in emergencies, etc. The designers’ team is now improving the technology and conducting experiments to test the material on real people.

The Wind Catcher project, a finalist of the 2016 competition, is a slow-motion wind power plant that can work at a locality if the speed of wind is fewer than 7 m/sec. Its designer Viktor Lopukhov says this wind generator can be in fact installed all over Ukraine.

The winner of the Vernadsky Challenge 2016 visitor’s prize, the Hideez Band project, is a smart bracelet that keeps keys to all the passwords of a user. According to the product manager Oleh Davydov, it is impossible to “crack” all the passwords simultaneously, and losing this bracelet is not a tragedy from the viewpoint of safety. The Hideez Band team has launched two crowd-funding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo platforms. This bracelet is available today for a preliminary order.

Cam Touch is a pointer that makes any surface interactive. The device was designed by the Kyiv Polytechnic University student Andrii Konovalenko. The project, a Sikorsky Challenge 2014 finalist, received support from the Noosphere Ventures foundation and was finished in collaboration with Noosphere Engineering School mentors. The device now consists of a web camera, a stylus, and a USB disc with special software. The designer said from the festival stage that 30 Cam Touch prototypes had been sent to the Ukrainian schools that offered preliminary testing bids.

The winner of this year’s Vernadsky Challenge TechNovator is a wireless charging device that allows charging gadgets at a distance of 5 meters. The designer of this project (also a co-developer of iBlazr, a portable flash for smartphones), Ivan Chuba, told about the stages of this innovative idea’s development. The experience of TechNovator shows how important it is not to give up – 95 percent of 1,000 experiments were unsuccessful, and the first six months of research produced no positive results. Today, TechNovator has a working prototype and is improving its technology. The team plans to launch a crowd-funding campaign for this device on Kickstarter in six months’ time.

Aliona Fedorova, the product designer of Branto Orb, a smart house portable system, spoke about the experience of the product’s creation and evolution. This project of Dnipropetrovsk designers is an “old-timer” on the market, with its first prototype having emerged as far back as 2013. As of today, Branto Orb has carried out two crowd-funding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo and is at the stage of pre-production engineering.

Oleksandr Nesterenko, head of the ARTKB design bureau, told about product development stages. In his words, the important psychological moment (for which project developers are often unprepared) is that the first models never look ideal and need to be improved. This bureau has designed the household coffee maker Bruno, the desktop analyzer Elvax, the reverse osmosis plant Ecosoft, etc.

Anton Senenko, a senior research associate at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics, told the festival about how to see an atom and about the way Ukrainian scientists develop nanotechnologies. He cited UNESCO report data on a negative personnel dynamics in the Ukrainian academe, which is opposite to worldwide tendencies – as of 2014, a mere 0.49 percent of Ukraine’s population are in scientific research. In addition to the GDP percentage spent on research and development (under the law “On Ukraine’s State Budget in 2016,” it is 0.16 percent), this shows the extent to which a country can ensure its innovational development. “There is rather a strong science sector in Ukraine, but it resembles today a powerful automobile that stands in the backyard and cannot move, for it has no wheels,” Senenko said in conclusion.

The last to speak was an Azerbaijani inventor, Rashid Aliyev, the winner of Vernadsky Challenge 2015, who told the audience about the most painful errors he had committed when launching his startup. Aliyev has developed the Braille Pad, a tablet for people with impaired eyesight. In his words, the first prototype of this tablet will appear in early July this year.

Best Robo Fest, a festival of robotics and innovations intended for the whole family and organized by the company Noosphere, was first held in Dnipro. According to the festival director Mykhailo Riabokon, if the fest causes an ample response in the city, it will become a regular event.

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