This week, the latest inventions that could keep us safer, make our lives easier, or even up our golf game stood on the brink of discovery at Syracuse University’s College of Engineering. It’s the annual Invent@SU competition.
Today marked the culmination of six weeks cramming all-day and all-nighters for student engineers tasked to come up with their best ideas for today’s market.
One week before judgement day, students buzzed between huge metal machines in the basement of Syracuse University’s Link Hall. Each conferring with seasoned fabricators to bring what was only an idea in mid-May into something tangible and useful.
At a large steel table, four engineering students inspected a large plywood box laid on its back, with a maze of dividers inside. They call it the ReplACE. The prototype is a golf ball replacement system for players about to tee off.
“It's non-electronic,” Jonah Blanchard, a senior, emphasized. “There's a button, flush with the ground you press down with your club, and when you lift your club again, there's a new ball on your tee.”
He and his teammates Nana Okrah and Austin Salmonds, both juniors, and Maya Alva, a sophomore, purposefully designed it for practical appeal.
“It's a completely mechanical system,” Blanchard nodded toward the wooden prototype, having practiced his pitch, “Less moving parts, less things that can go wrong, stuff like waterproofing is not quite as important with the electricity. Especially if it has to be concealed underground when that place could be 100 yards from the clubhouse.”
Upstairs, on the third floor of the engineering college, seven other teams were spread out running cross-checks on systems ranging from a device helping parents properly install a kids car seat, to a swappable sole for athletic shoes that can keep kids outfitted for more than a sports season.
On one side of the sunlit room Team “VentiQ,” was testing the pressure in a clothes dryer with its prototype.
“We created an attachable connector to the back of your dryer to measure your pressure and monitor lint build up in your dryer vents,” Saraj Parida explained the functionality for better supervising vents, “you need to get them cleaned and this can actually prevent fires from happening in your house.”
By week six, Invent@SU’s director Professor Alex Deyhim said the program has run each team through a series of rigorous stages.
"They do a patent search; they have to check whether it’s been done before," he said, ticking off the checklist of hurdles needed to take an idea from concept to presentation.
Once they agree on one idea, they start the design phase, which includes theoretical calculation, simulation, then building the prototype.
That does not include leadership and soft skill training, which comes before customer and financial research. After, they write a business plan, which helps in determining how much they're going to charge a client. All of that happens, Deyhim said, to build a formal presentation.
“It’s similar to Shark Tank,” he explained that they stand up in front of a group of judges.
These are investors or people from industry, who happen to be SU alumni and local business leaders. They have been offering advice along the six-week journey. And sometimes, during the students’ preliminary presentations, an investor bites.
“Yeah, one of the alumni that we pitched to a couple weeks ago owns like 6 Laundromats,” said Mikel Aizpurua, remembering a potentially promising connection he made midway through the process.
His team had named their device WashSentinel for its ability to protect clothes from theft at public laundromats. It appeared to be an ideal match up.
“They were like. One of the biggest complaints that we get is people being like, ‘Oh my laundry is stolen or it got moved,’” he recalled their conversation.
In the end, Aizpura and his teammates, Andy Rivera, Luzceleste Delgadillo, and Peter Slabaugh won first place for their WashSentinel and will split the $4,000 prize.
A device called KidKlamp keeping infants safer in their car seats won second place and $3,000.
Third place won $2,000, awarding a device called Safeinity providing security alerts through a sim card and Bluetooth technology.
Fourth place went to Parida’s team for their lint sensing VentiQ concept.
No matter who won, “they’re all winners, absolutely,” Professor Deyhim exclaimed.
With the last six weeks of skill building, and the final day of presentations, he said many now have the foundation to follow any concept through and succeed.
