Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Novosibirsk State University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
A large-scale hackathon dedicated to indoor navigation was held at Novosibirsk State University by the YADRO laboratory. This unique event brought together 78 participants in 22 teams representing not only Faculty of Information Technology (FIT), but also other faculties and institutes of NSU.
The YADRO laboratory, based at the Faculty of Information Technologies but with university-wide status, emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach, allowing students from various fields to immerse themselves in solving real-world engineering problems and gain invaluable experience in team development. The hackathon's theme, "Indoor Navigation Technologies," was chosen deliberately: today, when global positioning systems such as GPS/GLONASS have become indispensable in everyday life, indoor navigation systems remain a pressing issue without a universal solution.
The hackathon consisted of two intense stages. In the first, teams were given a testing ground with special beacons installed in advance. Using a signal from these beacons, they had to record the route they had taken on the computer, which required both technical and organizational skills. In the second round, participants presented their innovative solutions to indoor navigation, described their architecture, shared their experiences, and were evaluated by a panel of experts.
Hackathon organizer Alexander Alexandrovich Vlasov spoke about the significance and relevance of the task:
"Each of us is accustomed to the all-powerful GPS or GLONASS outdoors, but indoors, this service stops working, creating serious challenges—from finding classrooms at universities to navigating large shopping malls and airports. We are confident that our future IT engineers, whom we train today, will use robots and artificial intelligence to automate everyday and industrial processes in buildings—where most of our lives take place, and this is impossible without a precision positioning system."
The selection process was as open as possible: even schoolchildren and humanities students with basic IT knowledge were welcome to apply. The hackathon's rules allowed teams to independently assign roles and choose strategies, while the organizers provided comprehensive support in the form of consultations and the selection of training materials relevant to the task.
"Navigation in large buildings is a complex task. Beyond shopping malls and airports, there are major industrial facilities with robotic lines, where positioning is a matter of safety and an accuracy of 1-2 meters. We proposed a system based on beacons and an intelligent algorithm that achieved an accuracy of about 1.5 meters," said Bogdan Afanasyev, a Master's student in Philosophy and a member of the AKL team, about his project.
The results of the first round were announced on October 3, and the second round on October 4 at the YADRO Lab Day celebration. On that day, the participants discussed the challenges they encountered during the rounds, presented their solutions, and participated in the awards ceremony. Team "Barebuhi" emerged as the winner, with ProBLEms taking second place and SysCall taking third. Team n00bmasters also received the Audience Choice Award for their original engineering solution.
Participants gained not only valuable experience and knowledge, but also worthy prizes from YADRO, including financial support, which provided them with additional incentive for further research and development.
Material prepared by: Ekaterina Mukovozchik, NSU press service
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