Students hack together robots, Iron Man-like masks and more

The province’s biggest student brains gathered at the University of Toronto Sunday to show off a collection of zany inventions they built in 36 hours. Using superheroes, athletes and wheelchair users as inspiration, participants at the school’s annual hackathon fiddled with existing technology to develop new applications and devices.

The Star took a look at some of the event’s most innovative creations, ranging from a golf-swing analyzer to a gesture-controlled robot.

Bufferman:

Torontonians dreaming of emulating Iron Man need look no further than Bufferman, a gesture-controlled augmented reality headpiece featuring “superhuman enhancements.” The device, developed by three University of Waterloo engineering students, straps two webcams onto a user’s head, immersing the wearer in a system that can take photos with a hand gesture, process words written on a piece of paper and detect and analyze human faces. Bufferman developer Kevin Shi hopes that with more work, the invention will be able to read and translate text, help with navigation by recognizing landmarks, provide directions — and make video games more immersive.

SwingR:

Not having much luck nabbing a hole-in-one? Neither are a handful of U of T students who dreamed up SwingR, an analyzer that can tell a user how close they are to developing a more successful golf swing. Using a club hacked with a motion-detecting armband, golfers stand in front of a webcam taking swings. The camera is hooked up to a computer, which can then tell the user how to refine the motion. Gesturing to his group members, computer science student David Kua said they are all “terrible at golf, but this fixes it and one day, maybe, it can be used on a driving range.”

Pulsar:

Long road trips could get a lot more exciting thanks to a group of engineering students with a need for speed, who rigged a Tesla automobile to be the focus of a car chase game. Passengers can use the screen in the middle of the Tesla’s dashboard, as well as an additional Pulsar gaming screen, to pass time with this invention. The game creates a kind of virtual reality, in which the Tesla is racing other vehicles and being hit with weapons. Using GPS and audio software, the game can mimic the location and surroundings of the vehicle a passenger is riding in. “We are creating virtual disruptions, not real disruptions,” said Kevin Zhu, a U of T engineering student. “It is all about sensory overload and entertainment.”

Myrobot:

Forget about remote controls — the team behind Myrobot keep their device wheeling around the ground with a sensor and armband that respond to hand gestures. The battery-operated robot, which can move backwards and forwards, had to be rebuilt five times before its creators settled on a model that was structurally sound, said Myrobot’s Jonathan Rubianto. Though the current model is only a few inches wide, Rubianto hopes the technology can one day be used to move wheelchairs or heavy construction equipment.