Environmental Sensing Project Competition (2023)

The top 3 submissions selected by our reviewers and jury members are as follows. 

1. Design and development of a sustainable and automated irrigation system based on a multi-depth sensor fusion mechanism, IIT Palakkad.
2. Surfside Science:  Empowering Communities with Environmental Monitoring Innovations, Fontys University of Applied Sciences.
3. IoT-based Smart Water Level Monitoring, IIIT Hyderabad. 

Congratulations to the Winners. The complete list of accepted submissions is available at: https://openreview.net/group?id=helsinki.fi/ESPC/2023/Competition

Venue

The venue is hybrid, and we will be using Zoom for all those who cannot come to the University of Helsinki. The program includes a keynote titled Intelligence in MEMS Sensors, by Tuomas Hollman, Head of Bosch Sensortec, Finland.

Zoom Links:

https://helsinki.zoom.us/
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Program

09:00 – 09.15 - Welcome and Introduction
09:15 – 09:40 - Keynote by Bosch Sensortec.
09:40 – 09:45 - Break
09:45 – 11:15 - Long Presentations 
11:15 – 11:30 - Break
11:30 – 12:20 - Short Presentation
12:20 – 12:30 - Announcement of Winners and Closing Remarks
12:30 – 12:45 - Buffer

Keynote

Intelligence in MEMS Sensors, by Tuomas Hollman, Head of Bosch Sensortec, Finland.

Schedule for Talks - Long Presentations

09:45 – 10:00 - IoT based Retrofitting Model for Data-driven Water Flow Monitoring
10:00 – 10:15 - Design and development of a sustainable and automated irrigation system based on a multi-depth sensor fusion mechanism
10:15 – 10:30 - String Tension based Borewell Water Level Monitoring using IoT
10:30 – 10:45 - Surfside Science:  Empowering Communities with Environmental Monitoring Innovations
10:45 – 11:00 - IoT and ML-based Water Flow Estimation using Pressure Sensor
11:00 – 11:15 - IoT-based Smart Water Level Monitoring

Schedule for Talks - Short Presentation

11:30 – 11:40 - Comparative Analysis of Construction-Related Air Pollution in Indoor and Outdoor Environments
11:40 – 11:50 - Enviro Track
11:50 – 12:00 - Health-aware Point of Interest Recommender system
12:00 – 12:10 - Sensible Flow: IoT-based Smart Retrofit Water Flow Meter for Taps
12:10 – 12:20 - Programmable Sensor-System with multichannel sensor interface for both analog and digital inputs.

Note that all times are EET (time in Helsinki) and please contact Ashwin (ashwin.rao@helsinki.fi) if you wish to change the time slot for your presentation. Note that the time slot change is not guaranteed, and we will try our best to accommodate your needs. You can use the following link to check the time in your timezone that corresponds to 09:00 in Helsinki on 01.12.2023: Timezone convertor

The project competition is open to students—Bachelors/Masters/PhD or equivalent—and the participants are expected to design, build, deploy, and demonstrate an end-to-end solution for environmental sensing. This competition gives students a chance to test their abstract knowledge against complex real-life problems. Student groups are also free to submit their ongoing course projects, and projects that are part of their thesis. 

We will be using openreview.net for the submission, and all authors are expected to create a profile on that portal before the abstract submission deadline. The submissions can be uploaded at the following URL

https://openreview.net/group?id=helsinki.fi/ESPC/2023/Competition

Competition Overview

The project abstract that summarizes the goals must be submitted by the abstract submission deadline. The final report along with the accompanying video must be submitted by the report and video submission deadline. All submissions will be reviewed by our jury (Jury team A) and a subset of the submissions will be accepted. The accepted submissions will be invited to present their work during the event either as a poster (in person or virtually), or a presentation. The details of the event and program will be provided later and will depend on the number of accepted submissions. During the event, the reviewers (Jury team A and Jury team B) will decide the winners of the competition and the winner will be announced. 

Scope

We invite projects focusing on, but not limited to, the following themes.

• Air, water, and soil pollution sensing systems.
• Sensing solutions for smart buildings and green environments.
• Artificial Intelligence solutions for optimizing the performance of environment sensing systems.
• Data collection and data processing pipelines for environmental monitoring and protection.
• Weather monitoring, and disaster management sensing systems.

Important Dates

Deliverables

The authors are expected to submit an abstract by the abstraction submission deadline, and an updated abstract, report, and accompanying video by the report and video submission deadline.

Report

The report containing the following items must be submitted: goals, hardware design details, software architecture, challenges encountered and the approach to address the challenges, testing  and evaluation results,  pointers to the software repository and code, and discussion on the venues for future work to improve the solution. The templates and the example PDF files generated from these templates are available in the following URL: https://version.helsinki.fi/espc/report-templates/.

The report must be at most 10 pages in length and must include the names and affiliations of each of the authors.

Video

Along with the report, the authors are expected to submit a video of at most 10 minutes duration that demonstrates their solution. Please note that the videos are not uploaded on the submission portal and the authors are expected to provide a URL that points to the video. This URL must be accessible by just clicking the URL.

Open Access

The accepted submissions will be publicly accessible, and the authors are expected to include appropriate licenses for their report and video. The competition organizers are not responsible for any copyright infringement. Note that only the accepted submissions will be publicly available and submissions that have not been accepted will not be made publicly available. For instance, the accepted submissions from the previous edition of this competition are available here: https://openreview.net/group?id=helsinki.fi/ESPC/2022/Competition

Submission Portal

We will be using openreview.net for the submission, and all authors are expected to create a profile on that portal before the abstract submission deadline. The abstracts and the accompanying report and video can be uploaded at the following URL

https://openreview.net/group?id=helsinki.fi/ESPC/2023/Competition

Committee

Organizing Committee

Ashwin Rao, University of Helsinki.
Andrew Rebeiro-Hargrave, University of Helsinki.

Jury Team A

Meghna Agarwala, Ashoka Univeristy.
Sachin Chaudhari, IIIT Hyderabad.
Ekaterina Gilman, University of Oulu.
Naser Hossein Motlagh, University of Helsinki.
Dheryta Jaisinghani,  University of Northern Iowa.
Ashwin Rao, University of Helsinki.
Andrew Rebeiro-Hargrave, University of Helsinki.
Nagaveni S, IIT Dharwad.

Jury Team B

Kasper Buckbee, Bosch Sensortec
Petteri Nurmi, University of Helsinki
Martha Zaidan, University of Helsinki

Prize

The prize money (before taxes and transfer fees) is as follows.

We are still contacting additional sponsors as well, and the prize money will be updated accordingly. Furthermore, members of the winning teams will be shortlisted for a paid internship at the University of Helsinki. The number of positions and topics for the internships will be made available in January/February 2024. During the summer of 2023, we had hosted two interns who were shortlisted from the winning teams of ESPC 2022.