Open Innovation Ideas for Smart Cities

Published May-01-17

Breakthrough:
A wall climbing robot for the transportation of goods and passengers and a frictionless gear transmission system for vehicles.

Company:
KPIT Technologies Limited, India

The Story:

Smart cities are defined as urban regions that are highly advanced in terms of infrastructure and that use technology to share information and improve the quality of services and life for citizens. As technology improves and it becomes easier to tap into the creativity and vision of the crowd, initiatives to design cities that are smarter and more sustainable are increasing worldwide.

KPIT Sparkle 2017

Smart cities was the theme of an open innovation competition in India hosted by KPIT, a global technology company. The contest, called KPIT Sparkle 2017 was open to students across the country, and in particular sought solutions for smart transportation and smart infrastructure using technology.

Student innovation competitions are not only valuable for the ideas that they may generate, but also for the learning and feedback opportunities they provide for participants who are interested in innovation.

In its third year, Sparkle 2017 received around 1,500 ideas from more than 10,500 students in 300 colleges. The submissions were whittled down to 35 shortlisted teams who presented working prototypes of their concepts at the grand finale, held at the Deccan College Ground in Pune.

Prize Winners

The winners were evaluated by a panel of judges and awarded cash prizes. Among the numerous awards were:

The Platinum Award went to AlphaGears for a project to overcome problems with current mechanical gear systems in vehicles by using polymagnets.

The Gold Award was given to Robo-X-Prime for developing a robotic concept for power transmission line inspection.

Meanwhile, Silver Awards went to a wall climbing robot for the transportation of goods and passengers over a distance and for Traffic Eye, a mechanism to check on traffic violations.

The most popular project award winner was named as Team Humanoids from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology. Their project was an exhaust gas emission control device for vehicles that uses plasma technology. This results in less electric power consumption with no harmful gases discharged to the environment.

As well as the winning concepts, the open innovation student competition saw many other brilliant ideas across numerous fields that tackled urban technology, fuel technology, energy, autonomous vehicles, connectivity and analytics.

"We are extremely pleased to see the ideas being presented at the competition evolve every year," said Ravi Pandit, Co-founder, Chairman & Group CEO, KPIT.

"The development of smart cities will be pivotal in achieving economic and social advancement of the country, and also give opportunities for bright young minds to design innovative solutions to make our growing urban ecosystem sustainable.

“Our heartiest congratulations to the winners and all the participating students for their passion and enthusiasm in coming up with ideas that have the potential to radically change the way our cities function."

Additional Open Innovation Benefits

In addition to the smart ideas, the competition demonstrated one of the other important benefits of open innovation for organizations. Namely, that it can be a great way to find new talent.

All of the Sparkle 2017 finalists were invited for job and internship opportunities at KPIT.

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