LISHA students win Intel Embedded Systems Challenge 2013

A team formed by UFSC students, members of LISHA, placed first in the Intel's Embedded Systems Challenge, held in Niteroi/RJ Brazil between Nov. 4th and Nov. 8th. This was the first edition of the event in the country. Nevertheless, the challenge has been held for years in countries like US and China, where the number of contestants pass the count of hundreds. The event took in conjunction with the Brazilian Symposium on Computing Systems Engineering.

In this year's edition, teams from 29 Brazilian universities were admitted for the competition. Teams were asked to write project proposals involving one of three Atom-based embedded system platforms supplied by Intel. Selected participants received boards from Intel and had four weeks to implement the proposed systems. Besides writing a report, all teams gave talks about the projects and performed demonstrations of working prototypes during the event. The evaluation committee was formed by one Brazilian professor: Raimundo Barreto (UFAM); and two Intel senior staff: Byron Gillespie (Senior Engineer) and Melinda Murdock (Software Product Marketing).

The winner project is entitled "SmartHome Central: integrating network technologies in smart spaces". The project proposes the use of one of the Intel's Atom embedded platforms as a gateway for sensors and actuators in a home automation wireless network. The team instrumented LISHA's main room so light switches and air-conditioners would be actioned wirelessly by EPOSMoteII boards while environmental parameters (CO2 levels and temperature) were monitored. A supervision system running at Intel's system provided data logging and control intelligence to the system. The project was a consolidation of several initiatives taken at LISHA in the past few months. The team will travel to the USA in the beginning of 2014 to present the project at Intel Labs, Intel's research branch. LISHA's team for this project was formed by:

• Arliones Hoeller (Ph.D. student of Automation and Systems Engineering);
• Peterson Oliveira (M.Sc. student of Computer Science);
• Murilo Vitor (B.Sc. student of Control and Automation Engineering);
• Prof. Dr. Antônio Augusto Fröhlich (LISHA head - supervision).

For more information about EPOS and EPOSMoteII: http://epos.lisha.ufsc.br
For more information about LISHA's SmartHome, SmartBuilding, and SmartGrid initiatives: http://smarthome.lisha.ufsc.br

Team members would like to thank all LISHA colleagues for the support during the competition period. Specially, we would like to mention the efforts of Renato Bock, student of Control and Automation Engineering, for very helpful contributions.