COLLEGE STATION, Texas — The College of Engineering at Texas A&M University hosted their annual Invent for the Planet, a competition where students from around the world come together and showcase their inventions to help better the world. Their inventions target real-world problems from food waste to natural disasters.
Universities from all over the world came together to compete for a chance to have their projects funded by Chevron, Design Spark, and other major sponsors.
The universities participating organizes their own local Invent for the Planet competition. Once a team wins first place, they get an opportunity to submit a video to get a chance to showcase their invention at the main event. Where they are flown out to compete on a national level.
The first-place teams from the universities are given about a week to pitch before submitting a new video. The teams will be judged remotely and narrowed down to only five teams.
"We held 46 Aggie events since 2014 and we realized the local event was impacted for our students," said Rodney Boehm, who is the director of Engineering Entrepreneurship. "We realized we should do this globally."
This year, seven teams were selected and flown out from Thailand, Qatar Greece, New Mexico and Corpus Christi to compete in the final competition.
"The goals of the project are to implement computer vision and implied the design and get it ready for mass markets," said the students with Aquabox. Aquabox took first place in the competition.
The organization has a list of the other teams that didn't place but had interesting ideas and inventions. If you want to find out about the other teams who were a part of the competition you can visit the Texas A&M University Engineering website.
First place: $5,000 - Texas A&M University - Aquabox
The team from our very own College Station area created an invention called Aquabox. The team developed a solution increase food production for developing countries.
Second place: $3,000 - New Mexico State University - E2M3
New Mexico State University's team E2M3 created small-scale, renewable energy sources. The team developed an interactive art installation called EcoArt.
Third place: $2,000 - Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi - Team Island Vision
Team Island Vision from Texas A&M Corpus Christi is using ultrasonic sensors to detect the proximity of objects to a visually impaired individual
