Challenge accepted! First "kickelhack" hackathon at the TU Ilmenau

When Matthias Testa from the Ilmkubator announced the first Ilmenau "kickelhack" a few weeks ago, the interest was huge: around 50 people spontaneously registered for the collaborative software and hardware development event organized by the TU Ilmenau's start-up service:

This meant that the demand was significantly greater than the supply, and we had to choose. We didn't care at all about our background or degree course. We were particularly interested in the skills and previous experience that the interested parties indicated when registering to ensure that they would really have fun together.

"Sometimes it's best to just do things"

Jakob Lerch came up with the idea for the hackathon - derived from the words "hack" and "marathon" - during his semester abroad at Aalto University in Finland.

The special thing about it was that engineering, economics and design courses come together at a single institution. I found studying in this environment and working in one of the associations very inspiring and that motivated me to organize the hackathon

says the Master's student in his second semester of Computer Engineering. He knows from his experience in volunteer event organization and his proximity to the Chaos Computer Club:

Sometimes it's best to just do things and not talk about them forever.

At the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg at the end of 2023, he therefore made the decision together with Matthias Testa:

You have the Finnhütten, the Ilmkubator and other contacts at the university, I know a few people at institutes and companies in Ilmenau, it's all there and just needs a bit of communication. In this way, we bring people with a lot of technical expertise and experience together with those who want to apply their technical knowledge but don't know where to start.

A space for making

The FabLab in the Ilmkubator, the IlmkubatorLab - colorfully lit and complemented by snacks and cool drinks - was exactly the right setting for this in his eyes: a space for making:

It's really great what you can help build and do here

says Jakob Lerch. Niclas, one of the participants in the event, agrees:

It's pretty cool that there's a hackathon like this, where you can sit down in a team for a few days and just focus on programming - and implement a project that has been designed together with companies and research institutes, i.e. from a practical perspective.

The computer science student was one of 30 students who were lucky enough to take part in the programming marathon. Together with two others, he chose the challenge "Trafficability analysis for outdoor/offroad scenarios" from Fraunhofer IOSB-AST. Using terrain data in the form of a point cloud, the task was to find out whether certain parts of the terrain under consideration were passable or not. Another of the institute's challenges focused on how autonomous machines such as all-terrain forklift trucks perceive their environment, i.e. identifying obstacles such as kerbs, analyzing the navigability of routes and recognizing potential goods to be transported. The Metralabs challenge, on the other hand, involved using images and 3D data from a robot to find out which products were missing from a warehouse shelf.

Andrew McLeod, an expert in digital audio signal processing at the Fraunhofer IDMT, also had some special problems up his sleeve with the so-called "BPM Detection" for rhythm determination and the implementation of a synthesizer:

For those students who perhaps make music themselves in their free time, I also wanted to offer something creative with a fun factor with the Synthesizer Challenge, where they can try something out for themselves in a team - just like you do later in your career as a scientist, for example, when you visit a partner university for a few days and get something up and running there together with others in a very short space of time. Getting a taste of what that feels like is something you don't normally have the opportunity to do at university

Sharpening your own profile in a team

In addition to programming, teamwork and the ability to work under time pressure were also required.

It was all the nicer to just have a coffee in between, sit on a bench in nature and relax

said one participant. Being able to learn and chill out at the same time also inspired Ayush:

I love being able to work with others and be productive in an environment like this - in the middle of nature with lots of space. It helps you to raise your own profile and expand your skills. Because when you work in a team, you not only apply your own knowledge, but also learn to respect the views of others.

Three teams stood on the winners' podium after the final pitches: "The Noisefathers" for their outstanding work on the Noise Cancellation Challenge, "Team Cherry" with their solution for robot obstacle detection and the "Ba-Dums" for their BPM detection model. They received a Raspberry Pi 5 and all participants a voucher for the leisure activities offered by the city of Ilmenau. They were also allowed to design and produce their own team logo in the IlmkubatorLab.

Matthias Testa and Jakob Lerch presented the results of the event two days later at the Ilmkubator.connects regulars' table "Hack & Make":

The hackathon showed us what is possible in a short space of time when interdisciplinary teams come together in a productive working environment

All participants and organizers would therefore like to see more events of this kind in similarly "cool locations".

Impressionen

TU Ilmenau/Barbara Aichroth

TU Ilmenau/Barbara Aichroth

Jan Deupmann

Jan Deupmann

TU Ilmenau/Barbara Aichroth

Jan Deupmann