Find your team

Please use this google doc to share information about your project interest and strength.

Potential topics

There are several constraints to your project topic:

• There needs to be a physical component, i.e., while we encourage you to propose interdisciplinary solutions to a real-world problem, the solution should involve a mechanical design.
• You are encouraged to utilize IoT functionalities in your solution, without too much worry about cyber-security
• The design solution should have a low implementation cost
• The design solution should be problem oriented, i.e., the solution should solve a specific real-world problem. Cool gadgets without a real application are not preferred.

In general, solutions to security, energy, sustainability, education issues are all welcome. Below are some potential topics to help you brainstorm: In addition, Check places like KickStarter and Indiegogo to get some inspiration.

• Security of personal devices in public space: Say you are working on your laptop in Starbucks or a library. And you need to leave for a moment but don’t know if you should bring your laptop with you. What design solution can smooth this situation?

• Alternative alarm mechanism: Consider an accident or a terrorist attack in a public environment where noise level and population density is high, e.g., a concert or a football game. The old alarm mechanism, i.e., human screaming, may not work well since it is easily mixed with the background noise and people may not be sober enough to detect it. Any solution to this to minimize the casualty?

• Emergency alarm mechanism: A slightly different story than the above: Say you face a life-threatening event and calling 911 would take too long. What is a good solution that allows you to send out critical information (e.g., location, video and audio data of the environment) right at the moment?

• The “where is that empty parking space” problem: OK, let’s change to something lighter. Say you entered a crowded parking lot. Every turn is a gamble because you don’t know if there is still space left. Think about a design solution that will make life much easier, and probably save some gas.

Create your Kickstarter project

Go through the project creation process to get a better idea of what you will need to address before the launch. There are quite a lot of tutorials on google, so I will leave this to you.