Written by Clinton Bonner, VP of Marketing for Topcoder
We recently told you about an awesome challenge series on Topcoder—focused on using on-demand talent for EdgeX Foundry IOT innovation. Often a new tech philosophy needs an enabling catalyst for it to gain traction. For the Industrial IoT, EdgeX Foundry from the Linux Foundation is that catalyst. EdgeX Foundry is a vendor-neutral open source project hosted by LF Edge building a common open framework for IoT edge computing.
In Phase 1 of this series, EdgeX Foundry tapped the Topcoder community to conceptualize new and unique industry use cases that leveraged the EdgeX Platform. The concepts were procured through this work.
Well, the winners are in! LF Edge, EdgeX Foundry and the teams from Dell Technologies, Intel, HP, IOTech, and Wipro were impressed with the wide variety of innovative use case ideas and technical explanations as to how the EdgeX stack would be leveraged.
Here are the top 5 winning submissions:
1. cunhavictor (Brazil) – Fuel Inventory Control for Oil & Gas Downstream Industry
Synopsis: Product losses during fuel tank truck’s loading and offloading operations, as well as thefts, are common problems that translate to costs estimated around $133 Billion for players in the oil & gas downstream industry. The winning idea is a system for inventory control and loss/theft assessment that joins data from different sensors in a distributed processing architecture. Data integration is usually not handled properly by fuel distribution companies and the system would solve that. This integration not only has potential to reduce losses but help the fuel distribution company, gas station owners (retail outlets), the end user, and even refineries, to understand how inventory losses occur and to protect their assets.
“Excellent articulation of the business problem, instrumentation options, and how the data will be integrated. You have great domain expertise & clarity of thought.” – Challenge judge
2. wiebket (Netherlands) – Clinic Occupancy Monitoring System
Synopsis: Traveling to a clinic for a checkup is expensive and time consuming for many people in South Africa. Clinic managers have little oversight into patient flow through the clinic. The clinic occupancy monitoring system uses video cameras and door sensors connected to the EdgeX platform to accurately monitor unique patient visits and real time clinic occupancy without sending patient image data to the cloud. The beneficiaries of such a system are patients, clinic managers and the National Department of Health.
3. vivkv (India) – Machinery and Power Consumption Management
Synopsis: Gather sensor data through EdgeX device services and create an application/algorithm for machinery and power consumption management through the use of advanced analytics and machine learning solutions. This would be done in an integrated manner to maximize ROI on the assets and remain closely bound to the overall business budget.
4. Gungz (Indonesia) – Factory Smart Bin
Synopsis: Create an intelligent smart bin that can send the information about its fill level (volume) and weight to EdgeX platform and then, based on the fill level (volume) of the bin, EdgeX platform can send commands to AGV (Assisted Guided Vehicle) to automatically come and empty the trash bin. Using this approach, a factory can automate its waste tracking and waste disposal without human intervention.
5. kavukcutolga (Turkey) – EdgeX Parking Management
Synopsis: This proposal aims to decrease the time, money, and pollution caused by drivers spending time trying to find a parking spot by using IoT Devices such as Object and Distance sensors.
Congratulations to the top five winners. This concludes Phase 1 of this challenge series and now we’re moving on to Phase 2. The second phase will be a challenge where members pick three of the top ideas and build a Technical Design Document detailing the Technical gameplan of how an idea would be brought to life.
We’d like to thank LF Edge, EdgeX Foundry, Dell Technologies, Intel, HP, IOTech and Wipro for pushing innovation and collaboration that accelerates the deployment of IoT solutions. If you’d like to use on-demand talent in a similar manner to accelerate your technology goals, contact Topcoder here.
For additional information about LF Edge or EdgeX Foundry:
