When we think of rush hour, we normally think about the office commute and the congested highways which turn into parking lots. Have you ever thought about the traffic near your neighborhood schools during school drop off and pick up times? Parents rushing to pick up the kids and take them to other classes, kids walking and biking to and from school, drive drop lanes stretching into normal streets affect the traffic pattern.
Three young journalists, Vinitra Swamy, Michael Li and Ashley Liu from Cupertino High School, Cupertino, Calif., have come up with a solution by developing a product called “inVision” using Skybox Satellite Imaging to identify “Hot Spots” and suggest alternate safe driving routes.
They have integrated Skybox Imaging’s timely high-resolution imagery and video products into their design to identify these hot spots. InVision would then use an algorithm to avoid these hot spots and suggest an alternate safe route. It is definitely a useful product for parents, young teens beginning to drive and senior citizens to learn about the safest route they could take to get to their destination.
Conrad Award Foundation has selected team Tinnovate as a finalist in Cyber technology and Security and the team will present their product in the Innovation Summit to be held in NASA, Houston from April 10th to 13th, 2013.
(Above): Tinnovate team members (l-r) Vinitra Swamy, Michael Li and Ashley Liu.
The Spirit of Innovation Challenge is an International Competition with more than 200 teams participating from around the world. Jennifer Fotherby, executive director of the Spirit of Innovation Challenge said, “The teams exceeded our expectations and the quality of the products reaffirms our belief that young people working together can bring about significant and vital change to our global community.”
The foundation strives to combine education, innovation and entrepreneurship along with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to inspire solutions for achieving global sustainability with commercially viable products to benefit humanity. Vinitra and Ashley are both Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) officers who are budding entrepreneurs.
Vinitra is a Google ambassador for High School to promote computer technology and education among students. Integrating technology and entrepreneurship came naturally to the team. Their vision is to harness technology available from Skybox Imaging to develop a product that would benefit humanity on a day-to-day basis and improve the local community.
The team has been contacted by the Public Works Department of the City of Cupertino and they met with director Timm Borden to explore infrastructure challenges and civil engineering solutions for developing their local community using their product.
Their product does not end with identifying hot spots and suggesting alternate routes. It also provides the list of hot spots to the local government who can focus on those areas and improve the infrastructure in the long run to make those hot spots vanish. This could involve merely installing a traffic light, a stop sign, or removing obstructions, to long range projects like widening the roads.
Tinnovate is running for the People’s Choice Award in the Conrad Challenge.
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Bhuvana Ramachandran is a financial consultant and a community emergency responder. She lives in Cupertino, Calif.
