Amid the unparalleled catastrophe in the form of widespread COVID-19, SRM University AP, Andhra Pradesh students, Vyshnavi G and Padmateja, 3rd year, Computer Science and Engineering, during their Semester Abroad Program presented two projects at LA Hacks 2020, Southern California, and won accolades galore.
The virtual hackathon is one of the largest in the world and was held on March 27-29. SRM AP students submitted two projects in this hackathon as a single team and emerged as a finalist in the “Best Overall Hack”. The students developed Safely, the project title sponsored by Facebook as “Best Collaboration Hack”, and also worked on Go Farm which was sponsored by Honey as “Best Consumer Hack”. The team coordinated through Slack as the hackathon was turned into a virtual competition with the unfortunate outbreak of COVID-19.
Safely is a society-based pandemic monitoring application for reporting and tracking precise geolocations of COVID-19 cases. Safely allows users to report their own condition along with their geolocation. The application enables users to identify areas around them on a map. Areas with symptomatic users display lighter shades on the map, whereas locations with diagnosed patients and regions with a high concentration of affected users, show up as darker shades.
“With COVID-19 spreading rapidly, there are not enough resources to find or report the exact geographical information of new cases. Also, it enables ‘help agencies’ to recognize areas where resources are required to be sent“, Vyshnavi G explains.
GoFarm primarily benefits the farmers and improves consumer satisfaction. It is an application where a farmer can post information regarding harvested crops including vegetables, pulses along with quoting the price of the products. The customer can search for nearby farms using google maps and purchase through this platform.
Padmateja says, “In India, farmers are suffering because of high debt burdens, corruption in subsidies, and crop failure. Eliminating third parties and connecting farmers with customers would be helpful in upgrading the agricultural sector.”
In the future, the team wants to add a crop recommendation system for the farmers in the platform based on weather conditions. The students also plan to expand the availability of the application to many farmers and consumers across the nation, she added.
