Want to Change the World? Join the Keysight IoT Innovation Challenge
Technology has been transforming our world for millennia, from the invention of the wheel around 3,500 B.C., through Archimedes’ screw and the steam engine, to the Internet. These and other innovations have delivered huge benefits to our societies in terms of prosperity, health, and knowledge. But they may have also triggered serious unintended side-effects, which in turn, have created some of the most significant global challenges we face today.
These include climate change, pollution of air, water and land, and depletion of natural resources, all of which are having a growing impact on our lives. By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities and be exposed daily to unhealthy conditions, and more than five billion people will suffer from water stress. These problems demand urgent action to slow or halt the damage that has already been done. The only realistic solution is further advances in technology, aimed specifically at solving those challenges.
The World Economic Forum has recognized this with its ‘Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and Society’ initiative, which focuses on building a sustainable, inclusive future. The IoT is a key part of that initiative, and will be critical in accelerating progress towards the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which include eradicating hunger, ensuring good health, and delivering clean water and energy globally.
An analysis of over 600 IoT deployments has shown that 84% of existing IoT deployments can help address one or more of those UN goals. However, while these deployments are successful, the majority are relatively small-scale. We need to do more.
We need to take a new approach when developing IoT projects, which places sustainability goals alongside other commercial considerations and cements it as a cornerstone of business. We need to find the next generation of innovators with big ideas about how to harness small things to address our global challenges.
The Keysight Challenge: thinking big (and small)
That’s why Keysight is inviting both undergraduate and graduate students worldwide to participate in its new IoT Innovation Challenge, which starts April 1. Students will compete via online written and video submissions to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Grand Final at the World Maker Faire in New York, September 21-22, 2019. Six teams will advance to the final, where they will demonstrate their prototypes live before a panel of judges.
To earn your place in the Challenge, you need to design a low-power IoT sensor network strategy in one of two Innovation Tracks:
• Track 1: Smart Land – Design a sensor network strategy to cover one square kilometer of urban area to monitor and report on one or more of the following: air quality, water quality, data quality and sound quality, for at least one year.
• Track 2: Smart Water – Design a sensor network strategy to cover a major waterway area to monitor and report, on one or more of the following: acidity, turbidity, and contaminants, for at least one year.
The team chosen as the Challenge’s Grand Champion will win $50,000 in cash, and $50,000 of select Keysight test equipment for their school – and have the satisfaction of seeing your designs being turned into action. What’s more, two first place winners in each of the Challenge’s Innovation Tracks will win $25,000 in cash, and $25,000 of select Keysight test equipment for their school.
Your IoT innovations – with Keysight’s support – could play a key role in helping to build a better, smarter, more sustainable world for billions of people. Sign up now to be notified when the IoT Innovation Challenge registration goes live. We look forward to working with you.