Team Aalto enters final for worldwide IEEE design competition

View the competition entry as introduced in a video prepared by the team heading to Vancouver.

The competition final will be held in Vancouver, Canada, on 21 July. The group took part in the competition through their participation in two courses arranged by the School of Electrical Engineering: the electrics workshop and Antennas – Practice. The group consists of two master and three bachelor students of radio science and engineering.

The objective of the competition is to build an antenna optimised for the human chest area for transmitting certain data measurements from the human body into a mobile application. The group has designed and built a device that measures the respiratory rate primarily when practicing yoga. The device is attached around the user's chest, and it measures breathing with the help of an elastic resistive sensor. The measured data is analysed with a microcontroller and transmitted to a smartphone application via a bluetooth module. Users can thus monitor their breathing using the mobile application.

Team members Sampo Salo, Gaurav Khairkar, Juho Kortekangas, Joona Rahkonen and Minja Axelsson will be heading to competition in confident spirits. In Canada the group will take part in the week-long conference, and they also intend to get to know the other presentations while they are there.

Support for the group has been provided by Jari Holopainen, the teacher responsible for the Antennas – Practice course; Kimmo Silvonen, the teacher responsible for the electrics workshop; and mentoring Professor Ville Viikari. Last year the team from Aalto University came second in the same competition.