”The most important thing about a hackathon is to find the right balance between solving the challenge and enjoying the experience,” IT engineer, Gabriele Prestifilippo summarises.
His team is being joined by nearly 200 other experts to sign up for the Oulu 5GFWD Hackathon with the purpose of cracking 5G challenges set by Telia, Nokia and Oulu University Hospital.
An international group of participants will occupy the Oulu 5G Hackathon, including teams from the United States, India, Russia, Sri Lanka and as far as Brazil. The hackathon teams are looking for solutions to facilitate easier and safer hospital visits, develop a wireless 5G factory and design new applications utilising the 5G experience. The Oulu 5GFWD Hackathon will take place at the University of Oulu from June 9–11, 2017.
Factory, hospital visit and new applications as tasks
The Oulu 5G hackathon is said to be the first of its kind in the world. Its three challenge-givers have great expectations.
“We are searching for genuine solutions, and we believe we will also find new partners for our 5G application development. We are going to commercialise 5G services and products in the near future, and that is why we are in it for real. 5G is about to take a significant step further from engineers’ contemplations toward real end user experience,” says Innovation manager, Mika Raitola of Telia.
The Oulu Hackathon makes history for Nokia: the company is opening the barriers of its base station factory to outsiders for the very first time. This means introducing a whole bunch of robots, real 5G base stations and Nokia’s super camera OZO to speed up the innovation process. Nokia, too, is looking for new partners through the hackathon.
“We are challenging the teams to develop our forthcoming factory in Rusko, Oulu. The facility will be controlled by 5G technology. Now the factory has more than 12 kilometres of copper cable installed, but 5G will enable the production and robot control to become wireless and safe. The teams get to participate in developing these solutions with commercial goals,” explained Mikko Nissi from the Nokia Oulu factory.
Hospital visits may be scary and difficult for their customers as well as guests. Oulu University Hospital has a vision of making the visits a lot more comfortable with new technology.
“Our team is taking part in the hospital challenge in which we utilise 5G to design a more fluent way of visiting the hospital. We already have some experience with challenges in similar environments and a few good ideas ready. If we are quick, we will participate in the other challenges as well. I’m looking forward to a great project and fantastic new acquaintances. I already know that Oulu has an esteemed university and beautiful nature,” says Gabriele Prestifilippo.
The intense 48-hour Oulu 5GFWD Hackathon takes place at the Tellus Innovation Arena at the University of Oulu between 9–11 June 2017. The category winners will battle it out for the Grand Prix on Monday 12 June at the EuCNC 2017 conference on communications, taking place in Oulu at the same time.
With a data transfer speed up to 150 times faster than the current 4G networks, 5G’s speed and near non-existent latency make the technology more revolutionary for people, the environment and production facilities than any of the previous network reforms have done.
It enables a whole new kind of real-time and virtual entertainment experiences in the form of games, concerts and sports events. For utility purposes, 5G can control robots in dangerous working conditions and facilitate virtual schools or medical centres, for example.
What is expected in the hackathon?
The hackathon will be a tough, often coding-related competition run in good spirits. Usually, a hackathon lasts for 24–48 hours, with teams of experts from different fields competing with each other in cracking genuine challenges.
The Oulu 5GFWD Hackathon is organised by BusinessOulu, Nokia, Telia, Oulu University Hospital and a group of selected partners. The practical organising body is Ultrahack, a Finnish pioneer known as the founder of the biggest hackathon in Europe.
The companies benefit from expedited development through fresh ideas as well as a tried and tested method of recruiting new employees. Successful hackathon teams gain fame, important new contacts and opportunities for career advancement.
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