Written by co-chairs of the EdgeX Foundry China Project Melvin Sun, Senior Marketing Manager for the IoT Group at Intel, and Gavin Lu, R&D Director OCTO at VMware
On Thursday, September 24, after more than 2 months of fierce competition, the EdgeX Foundry Challenge Shanghai 2020 culminated in the final roadshow. Companies, colleges, hacker teams and enthusiastic audiences from around the world participated in the live video broadcast.
Yingjie Lu, Senior Director of IOT Group in Intel Corporation and Jim White, CTO of IOTech Systems and Chairman of EdgeX Foundry Technical Steering Committee, delivered opening and closing speeches for the final roadshow respectively. Mr. Peng Jianzhen, Secretary General of CCFA (China Chain-store & Franchise Association), and Mr. Shu Bin, experts from China State Grid, made summarizing remarks on all the teams of commerce and industrial tracks respectively.
The EdgeX Challenge Shanghai 2020 is an international hackathon event based on EdgeX, Foundry. It was successfully kicked off as a joint effort among EdgeX community members Canonical, Dell Technologies, HP, Intel, IOTech, Tencent, Thundersoft, VMware and Shanghai startup incubator Innospace.
In the age of the Internet of Things, collaboration is the foundation of all technological and business innovation. And such a spirit can be spread and practiced through the EdgeX community. Today, the EdgeX community members have collaborated extensively across the globe to drive technological development and business prosperity in the global IoT industry.
40 teams submitted their proposals covering both commerce and industrial tracks, including retail, assets tracking, manufacturing, environmental protection and energy conservation, utilities and building automation. The cutting-edge technologies adopted in the works, such as edge computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, sensors, blockchain, satellite communications, Internet of Things and big data, fully demonstrate the strength of innovation and foreshadowing the development and transformation of future life.
After careful selection by the judges, a total of 15 teams were selected as finalists on July 24. Based on the Devkits by Intel and the EdgeX challenge committee, these teams started use cases in various verticals, solving industry pain points, empowering deployable applications, and committing themselves to build a feast of technological innovation and change. The expert judges focused on the development process of the teams and worked with them with daily Q&As, weekly discussions and mid-term check-point meetings.
This Hackathon event has been running smoothly in a tense and methodical atmosphere with strong strength and support. As of mid-September, 15 teams had submitted their final projects, culminating in the finals. Click here to watch snapshot video of the EdgeX Challenge finalists preparing for the competition.
List of teams for roadshow:
Commerce Track
| Sequence | Code of team | Name of team | Use Cases | Time |
| 1 | c18 | HYD Miracle Innovation | Apparel store edge computing | 9:12 |
| 2 | c27 | DreamTech | Mortgage assets monitoring based on blockchain +edge computing | 9:24 |
| 3 | c16 | USST,YES! | Retail store edge | 9:36 |
| 4 | c19 | Breakthrough Studio | Scenic Intelligent Navigation | 9:48 |
| 5 | c26 | i-Design | Edge-cloud based far ocean intelligent logistics/monitor | 10:00 |
| 6 | c07 | Starlink team from JD.com | Retail store heatmap & Surveillance | 10:12 |
| 7 | c03 | AI Cooling | Building automation | 10:24 |
| 8 | c08 | Sugarinc Intelligence | Smart building & office management | 10:36 |
| 9 | c10 | Five Card Stud fighting force | Automobile 4S (sales, service, spare part, survey) store | 10:48 |
Industrial Track
| Sequence | Code of team | Name of team | Use Cases | Time |
| 1 | i07 | VSE | Drivers school surveillance & analytics | 11:00 |
| 2 | i09 | Smart eyes recognize energy | CV based intelligent system of meters recognition | 11:12 |
| 3 | i01 | Baowu Steel | Defects detection in steel manufacture | 11:24 |
| 4 | i08 | CyberIOT | Guardians of electrical and mechanical equipment | 11:36 |
| 5 | i10 | Power Blazers | Autotuning system for orbital wind power system | 11:48 |
| 6 | i06 | Jiangxing Intelligence | Intelligent Edge Gateway for Industrial | 12:00 |
Note: The sequence of the roadshow above is determined by the drawing of lots by the representatives of each participating teams.
The live roadshow was successfully broadcasted on September 24, where all the final teams presented their proposals and interacted with the judges. To ensure a comprehensive and professional assessment, the organizer invited expert judges with blended strong background, including:
– Business experts: Gao Ge, General Manager of Bailian Group’s Science and Innovation Center; Violet Lu, IT director of Fast Retailing LTD; and Yang Feng, Head of Wireless and Internet of Things of Tencent’s Network Platform Department
– EdgeX & AIOT experts: Henry Lau, Distinguished Technical Expert on Retail Solutions in HP Inc.; Gavin Lu, Director in VMware (China) R&D Center; Jim Wang, senior expert on IoT in Intel Corporation; Chris Wang, director of artificial intelligence in Intel; Jack Xu and Mi Wu, IoT experts in Intel; Xiaojing Xu, Senior Expert, Thundersoft Corporation
– Representatives from the investment community: Riel Capital, Intel Capital, VMware Capital …… In addition, the quality of the team & proposals attracted a large number of investment institutions, including Qiming Venture Capital, Morningside Capital, ZGC Qihang Investment, and other professional investors constitute the Members of the observer group for this live roadshow.
During the live streaming roadshow, all the teams’ works demonstrated the unique advantages of EdgeX in IoT and the edge computing development. The judges provided feedback and suggestions for Creativity, use of Computer Vision, Impact, Viability, Usefulness, simplicity, as well as documentation preparation and performance in the roadshow session. Observers and fans from all over the world also expressed their opinions through messaging and comment sections, which made the competition exciting.
The live roadshow has ended but the organizing committee is still in the process of collecting the judges’ questions and compiling the teams’ answers. Based on the above information, the competition will carefully score the ideations and demos to filter out competitive & deployable solutions to customer’s pain points. Meanwhile, we will hold an award ceremony at the Global Technology Transfer Conference on October 29, where the winners will receive a total of 90,000 RMB in cash prizes and rich rewards for their efforts.
Video playback of the final roadshow will be available on bilibili website, if you are interested in watching it, please follow the channel of EdgeX China Project on Bilibili. For more about the EdgeX Foundry China Project, visit the wiki at https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/display/FA/China+Project.
