KONE launches Elevator Hackathon powered by IBM, HackerEarth

BENGALURU: KONE, one of the prominent companies in the elevator and escalator industry, has launched a SmartElevator Challenge for developers and hackathon enthusiasts in association with IBM & HackerEarth. Organized by HackerEarth, the hackathon will be powered by IBM Watson IoT platform on IBM Bluemix Cloud platform.

The goal of the Hackathon is to encourage developers to come up with ideas for smart elevators to enhance user safety & experience and develop utility tools for KONE by applying open ideation using IBM’s Watson IoT plaform. This platform will enable device connectivity and provide the ability to derive real time insights based on rules,which developers can leverage to build intelligent elevator solutions.

The three phased Hackathon started with a phase one online registration which commenced on December 26, 2016. By the time registrations closed on February 5, 2017, over ~ 2300 people across India had registered for this challenge. During the second phase of the offline event, scheduled between February 18 – 26, 2017 in Bengaluru and Chennai, the top 60 shortlisted teams will develop and present their ideas. The third phase will involve the top 15 teams demonstrate the integration of their prototypes with real elevators at the Chennai R&D center on March 4, 2017. The winning team will be rewarded with a cash prize of INR 4 Lakhs and will win a chance to work with KONE’s R&D center in Finland to further develop the actual idea.

“We are proud to host the first-ever Elevator & Escalator Industry Hackathon in India. Our objective behind conducting this Hackathon is to bring thousands of Developers together and foster Digital Innovation. Our aim is to improve the flow of urban life through a mix of Technology, Research, Market Knowledge and out of the box ideas. Our ranking in the Forbes list of top 100 innovative companies in the world for the 6 th consecutive year, stands testimony to the fact that we continuously foster innovation within KONE. We are delighted to work with IBM and aim to encourage some of the best minds in the Developer Community to create and deliver seamless people flow experience,” said Amit Gossain - Managing Director, KONE India.

Commenting on the hackathon, Sachin Gupta, CEO and co-founder, HackerEarth said “The fourth industrial revolution will be led by the use of IoT applications in the industrial segment, which will lead to creation of new jobs with new skills. IoT is all about sensing, collecting data, and using it to improve our lives. The developers and hackathon enthusiasts participating in this event will be able to develop intelligent elevator solutions by using IBM’s Watson IoT on the IBM Bluemix Cloud Platform. The hackathon will be held both online and offline as it will help us to reach out to the larger developer community across the country.”

“A highly-populated country like India requires smart cities and buildings to understand the movement patterns and preferences of its population in order to create systems which make the user experiences more intuitive, convenient and enjoyable. Through the use of IBM’s Watson IoT on the IBM Bluemix Cloud Platform, participants of the KONE ‘Smart Elevator Challenge’ will have the opportunity to bring their ideas to life while the systems analyze the disparate data, identify and predict issues, reduce downtime and personalize the experience for the end users,” said Kaushik Bhaskar, Vice President, India Software Labs, IBM India.