On Saturday November 20th, students from WCCA’s Stem class traveled to Le Tourneau University in Longview, Texas, to participate in the 2021 Machine Learning Competition. This annual event is sponsored by Qeexo software and Arduino microcontrollers.
Teams were tasked with identifying a real-world problem and required to use the provided microcontroller and software to engineer a solution. The solution had to follow predetermined guidelines with the final design refined enough for a marketable product.
The WCCA Stem Girls designed a product to help colorblind people identify Red, Green, Yellow and Blue colors. Colorblindness affects 300 million people worldwide. Their design called the “Color Cuff” is a wearable device that reports the color of an item to the user’s cell phone through an app. The challenge for the team was to teach their device to recognize the colors present on an item and identify the colors as rapidly and accurately as possible.
Participants in the competition had to create both a PowerPoint presentation and video demonstration of their product. Competition began with 30 teams vying for the title and cash prizes. In the second round of competition the field was narrowed to 7 teams. The last 7 teams consisted of both high school and college level software programmers.
WCCA Stem Girls placed 1st in the High School division, 2nd in the overall competition, and were also voted as fan favorite for best design.
The WCCA Stem Girls will next tackle a soft robotics project to demonstrate the use of aide in movement and animation/articulation in conjunction with Harvard University.
