One thousand lines of code later @ MakeHarvard
Creating an autonomous Gimbal machine to help the visually impaired won the Best Use of Google Cloud
While this would’ve been my fifth Hackathon, I still had absolutely no idea on how to code. How was I suppose to make any tangible impact in an event that RELIED on coding? So naturally, I was extremely nervous.
While I never truly understood the woes of imposter syndrome but damn, it’s real. I felt intimated by the intellectual prowess everyone encapsulated and with a desire to do good, I had no real way to catch up with the event only being twenty hours away.
Before the Hackathon, I researched long and hard just to make a simple introduction paragraph that was to be on Facebook about myself and the ideas I’d love to work on. Once I posted it, I was sweating while waiting for participants to react or comment on the post.
Luckily, what turned out to be a great Hackathon was solely because I had the fortune of meeting Charles — who ended up being my team partner.
I initially wanted to create a VR/AR simulation that would serve as a rehabilitation treatment for dementia patients (not so original, thinking of it now haha) but Charles had this sense of wit, sharpness and curiosity that convinced me I was in good hands as we attempted in creating an autonomous *physical* machine to help the visually impaired.
And since I did not understand the mumbo jumbo of programming — I was fortunate since Charles never hesitated to hold a detail that seemed obvious. He always shared openly (often very long messages) and responded to the same repeated questions I had with equal sincerity. Since this isn’t an open love letter that praises Charles endlessly, the point to take here is that who you work with is extreeeemely important and that it could very well make or break your team.
Since this didn’t fix the problem of my lack of coding skills, I worked on the design foundation and non-technical side of things instead. Of course, like in previous Hackathons, I created the design foundation of the App, the graphics for presentation and constructed the video.
It was a two person team so Charles did a lot of heavy-lifting. He literally designed this architecture during the twenty-four hour Hackathon window and it genuinely blew my mind:
Historically, teams never have enough time to finish coding a simple mobile application with a functioning user interface. So I sort of did not have high expectations for the gimbal to be completed by the end of the event (although I was still innately rooting for it to go well).
And just around six hours in, Charles sent me this video:
It’s the 3D printed Gimbal machine LITERALLY REACTING to a human’s voice command.
This may sound terribly corny but it was absolutely a transformative experience. I thought greatness has been achieved in the world — from Lincoln to Obama — but to watch Charles create a functioning *physical* prototype was beyond me and my incomprehensible mind. I was left to stare at the screen and gawk in awe at what he achieved — it left me inspired and full of hope in what humans are capable of.
In the end, we had a machine that responded to voice commands which ran with over a thousand lines of code. From recognising what angle to rotate and describing the view, and acting as a virtual companion to the user, we took home Best Use of Google Cloud.
If you’re interested in learning more ….
- Our Devpost Submission: https://devpost.com/software/adaeye
- GitHub Repo: https://github.com/CharlesXu1124/AdaEye
- Official Demo Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poxKzxJhYnk&ab_channel=ZheyuanXu
What’s next? We’re currently creating another article that goes into detail about the technology that was used, how we built it, etc! Stay tuned
I created a Discord server for students to stay updated on upcoming Hackathons + hot internship opportunities, develop our projects further, and rely on each other for support. If this is up your street, join here
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