Datagroup acted as the general sponsor of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge Kiev "Space" Hackaton. This global event in the technology industry took place in Kiev for the first time.
The company awarded the “Do not crash my drone” team from Severodonetsk with prizes for taking the third place in the competition. The team created a mobile app to plan safe routes for drones with consideration of weather and landscape conditions. The team is engaged in drone operations, and its project was the closest one to the task order, prepared by Datagroup experts for event participants. The main prize from the sponsor for the team members was the possibility to have free training at the company.
The company also sponsored a purchase of incentive prizes for all the event participants. Each participant received a best-selling book, a biography of the famous innovator and entrepreneur Elon Musk, published in the Ukrainian language.
The main objective of the event was to unite the efforts of enthusiasts and innovators to solve practical problems facing humanity in the field of space and Earth exploration. 120 participants from all over Ukraine participated in the event, and got 48 hours to solve space problems.
20 teams reached the final and had prior submitted projects in 6 main Hackathon topics: aeronautics, technology, flying to Mars, the solar system, the planet Earth and the space station. At this stage, the teams made 20 presentations. They included machine learning to study asteroids, creating a thematic search engine and chat bots, transfer into virtual reality for testing prototypes of real flight to Mars, creating simulations of the planet colonization, modifying descending modules and mining on asteroids.
The Hackaton winner was the Mars Hopper project (Alexander Butkalyuk, Vyacheslav Osaulenko Andrey Muzichenko, Ilya Rubinsky, Pavel Pravdyukov, Nikolai Denisenko and Sofia Butkalyuk). It offers an alternative technology of moving around the surface of Mars. The team developed a model rocket plane, which uses carbon dioxide as fuel.
The second place was awarded to the Clouds or Sontrails project. The team developed a software application that can help a common man on the Earth determine whether he sees a natural cloud formation or a vapor trail from the airplane.
The projects of all Ukrainian finalists are evaluated by the global jury and have a chance to be among the best in the world.
