Imagine Cup 2014, the first experience of participation and how it was
Hello friends. My name is Dmitry. I want to tell you my story of participation in the Imagine Cup. What is good student time? We can do without ordinary phrases, let me just say that behind the student’s red eyes, during sleepless nights and eternal fatigue lies a rich and, oddly enough, most free time of life.
It was autumn 2013. While I was writing boring university labs, my soul craved adventure. I heard about the technological competition of student projects Imagine Cup back in school and, of course, dreamed of participating in it. Now I was in my second year and understood that the time had come! It's time to flow into the stream of real student life. Together with my like-minded friend Vladislav, it was decided to create a team and conquer such a glorious competition.
')
We faced a basic task - to come up with an idea. It's time to remember all the old ideas and work on creating new ones. After several weeks of wandering around the halls of the mind and brainstorming, we had a small list of different ideas from which we had to choose one single, breakthrough idea. We went for advice to the teacher of our university (UNN them. NI Lobachevsky) Sergei Sidorov, who three times participated in ImCup and in 2009 with his team took second place in the international final. Inspired by communicating with an experienced participant in the competition, we already knew without any doubt what we would do.
Our project is a rapid 3D-prototyping system using gestures. The project was conceived as the embodiment of modern computer technology in human creativity. We took up the task of virtualization of the sculptor. The bottom line is to enable a person to "sculpt sculptures" using a computer, while not having in their hands any material or tools. The name of the project was given the appropriate - Sculpt Art .
We were faced with the task of tracking the movements of a person and changing the 3D object accordingly. It was necessary to create our own interface for gestural interaction with the user and develop algorithms for deforming 3D models. In our conditions, the Kinect sensor was the best fit for the tracking task. This was followed by a long stage of wandering in the choice of the required platform with support for the Kinect sensor and the possibility of 3D visualization. As a result, we stopped at the desktop WPF application. The development involved Kinect SDK and 3D Tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation.
The main feature of the application in our intentions was the printout of the finished model on a 3D printer. In January 2014, visiting the Geek Picnic science and art festival in Moscow and seeing a huge number of 3D printers, we fully felt the rapid development of this industry, after which we began to focus on the development of the project on 3D printing.
It's time to apply for the competition. At that time, we did not have a working prototype, but we filled out an application and soon received an invitation to the regional final in the city of Kazan. Leaving behind the most difficult part of the journey, namely the implementation of the prototype in a short time to the regional final, we were ready to conquer the capital of Tatarstan.
The long-awaited trip has arrived, I will leave behind the scenes the story of how we forgot our passports to board the train, how the local police detained us in Kazan in the subway before finding out our identity, I can only say that we were late for the Imagine Cup. The delay was not critical, and we still made a speech! Among the 11 participating teams, we took the first place and reached the Russian final.
On all this way, there were two of us and we did not expand the team (although according to the rules of the competition there could be up to 4 people in the team), and this was one of the mistakes. There was a lot of work and preparation for the final, we felt a real lack of human resources. We had to be torn between the development, the solution of organizational issues, the preparation for the exhibition, the printing of the first 3D models created in our program, and a bunch of various minor problems. Few days left before the trip to Moscow. To test our application and show a wide audience, we went to the International IT-forum, which was held in Nizhny Novgorod.
A small video from the exhibition:
Soon we went to Moscow, this time the trip cost without incident. On the first day, an accelerator was held for teams, where participants had the opportunity to get to know each other, prepare presentations of their projects correctly and get advice from professionals. On the second day, the teams performed. Our performance was not very successful, we could not present the project from the right side and conquer the hearts of the chairmen of the jury. We did not take prizes in the competition, but having heard a lot of constructive criticism towards the project, we began to rethink the very idea of the project.
Now we are planning to continue working on the project and are at the stage of choosing a new development path that could lead us to create a full-fledged product that is relevant in the current market. We hope that next year, considering all the mistakes, we will be able to win in such a glorious competition.
What did the Imagine Cup contest give me? Throughout the entire journey, I received a tremendous experience in developing, presenting, communicating with people, discovered the priorities of personal development and finally had fun! I am sure that I will remember the contest only with a smile on my face.
Imagine Cup 2014 , Feel Future team, Sculpt Art project
The beginning of the way
It was autumn 2013. While I was writing boring university labs, my soul craved adventure. I heard about the technological competition of student projects Imagine Cup back in school and, of course, dreamed of participating in it. Now I was in my second year and understood that the time had come! It's time to flow into the stream of real student life. Together with my like-minded friend Vladislav, it was decided to create a team and conquer such a glorious competition.
')
From idea to prototype
We faced a basic task - to come up with an idea. It's time to remember all the old ideas and work on creating new ones. After several weeks of wandering around the halls of the mind and brainstorming, we had a small list of different ideas from which we had to choose one single, breakthrough idea. We went for advice to the teacher of our university (UNN them. NI Lobachevsky) Sergei Sidorov, who three times participated in ImCup and in 2009 with his team took second place in the international final. Inspired by communicating with an experienced participant in the competition, we already knew without any doubt what we would do.
Our project is a rapid 3D-prototyping system using gestures. The project was conceived as the embodiment of modern computer technology in human creativity. We took up the task of virtualization of the sculptor. The bottom line is to enable a person to "sculpt sculptures" using a computer, while not having in their hands any material or tools. The name of the project was given the appropriate - Sculpt Art .
We were faced with the task of tracking the movements of a person and changing the 3D object accordingly. It was necessary to create our own interface for gestural interaction with the user and develop algorithms for deforming 3D models. In our conditions, the Kinect sensor was the best fit for the tracking task. This was followed by a long stage of wandering in the choice of the required platform with support for the Kinect sensor and the possibility of 3D visualization. As a result, we stopped at the desktop WPF application. The development involved Kinect SDK and 3D Tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation.
The main feature of the application in our intentions was the printout of the finished model on a 3D printer. In January 2014, visiting the Geek Picnic science and art festival in Moscow and seeing a huge number of 3D printers, we fully felt the rapid development of this industry, after which we began to focus on the development of the project on 3D printing.
It's time to apply for the competition. At that time, we did not have a working prototype, but we filled out an application and soon received an invitation to the regional final in the city of Kazan. Leaving behind the most difficult part of the journey, namely the implementation of the prototype in a short time to the regional final, we were ready to conquer the capital of Tatarstan.
Regional finals
The long-awaited trip has arrived, I will leave behind the scenes the story of how we forgot our passports to board the train, how the local police detained us in Kazan in the subway before finding out our identity, I can only say that we were late for the Imagine Cup. The delay was not critical, and we still made a speech! Among the 11 participating teams, we took the first place and reached the Russian final.
On all this way, there were two of us and we did not expand the team (although according to the rules of the competition there could be up to 4 people in the team), and this was one of the mistakes. There was a lot of work and preparation for the final, we felt a real lack of human resources. We had to be torn between the development, the solution of organizational issues, the preparation for the exhibition, the printing of the first 3D models created in our program, and a bunch of various minor problems. Few days left before the trip to Moscow. To test our application and show a wide audience, we went to the International IT-forum, which was held in Nizhny Novgorod.
A small video from the exhibition:
Russian final
Soon we went to Moscow, this time the trip cost without incident. On the first day, an accelerator was held for teams, where participants had the opportunity to get to know each other, prepare presentations of their projects correctly and get advice from professionals. On the second day, the teams performed. Our performance was not very successful, we could not present the project from the right side and conquer the hearts of the chairmen of the jury. We did not take prizes in the competition, but having heard a lot of constructive criticism towards the project, we began to rethink the very idea of the project.
Now we are planning to continue working on the project and are at the stage of choosing a new development path that could lead us to create a full-fledged product that is relevant in the current market. We hope that next year, considering all the mistakes, we will be able to win in such a glorious competition.
Conclusion
What did the Imagine Cup contest give me? Throughout the entire journey, I received a tremendous experience in developing, presenting, communicating with people, discovered the priorities of personal development and finally had fun! I am sure that I will remember the contest only with a smile on my face.
Imagine Cup 2014 , Feel Future team, Sculpt Art project
Words of gratitude
I would like to thank Microsoft for holding the annual Imagine Cup competition, Sergey Sidorov for inspiration, Alexey Solodovnikov for valuable advice, friends and relatives for support, the Laboratory of physical fundamentals and wireless communication technologies of UNN for a 3D printer and Boris Tereshchenkov for help.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/222783/
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