"The final day brought together the best 25 teams, 71 male and 71 female students. The competition was huge. When I compare it with last year's first year, the increase in participation was 30 percent," said Tadeáš Salaba from the company Technological Literacy, which is the main organizer of the Olympics. The final "twenty-five" came from 603 groups, a total of 1,665 male and female students, from grammar and secondary vocational schools that participated in the school round. The finals program included lectures on technology trends, as well as project preparation and development under the guidance of mentors from academia and industry, followed by a series of presentations.
Among the competition entries, the jury was most impressed by the Goobers team with its well-thought-out vision of a smart textbook. "It's an app that contains a significantly shortened version of textbooks, divided by topic," said Aneta Dvořáková, co-author of the project. She described that the textbook would have a chatbot built into it. "The chatbot will give the person an answer, with the fact that it will also provide the source, i.e. one of the textbooks from the database," the student added. She noted that it would also be possible to ask the same thing multiple times and it would be described in more or less depth.
"Going through textbooks over and over again is not entirely pleasant. We had two big tests in the last two days, and we realized that it's three 700-page books that you have to go through, to find out exactly what's in what. And that it could be done so much better with an app like this," the student then described the sources of inspiration. Another co-creator of the project, Šimon Chlouba, stressed that this artificial intelligence would not be technologically demanding. "It only uses a limited dataset. It can run on mobile phones or tablets and it doesn't need big data centres, so it will also be ecologically beneficial," the student stressed. Both he and Dvořáková said they are interested in the topic of artificial intelligence outside the competition.
The issue of 3D printing was the subject of a presentation with which the three-member team PORGgers, also from the New PORG High School, won silver. "Our project deals with 3D printing in space and how to make it a bit more accessible and cheaper," Vojtěch Kysilka said on behalf of the group. He noted that importing materials into space is very expensive and one way to make it cheaper is the idea of 3D printing various parts. A layer of unconsolidated rock material, called regolith, which is found on Earth as well as on Mars or the Moon, could be an ingredient in the future. Research into the use of regolith as a material additive for 3D printers has been going on around the world for many years. The PORGers student team, made up of Kysilka, David Dvořák and Martin Bloudek, described some of the ways in which material testing can take place here on Earth, such as using basalt from an Italian volcano, which is largely the same composition as soil on Mars, waste simulating waste from the International Space Station and the use of vacuum chambers.
Bronze got the idea to design a t-shirt that would be used, for example, by athletes to monitor their health. The team behind it is Pomněnky, consisting of Petr Žampach, Tomáš Komárek and Tadeáš Fryčák from the Jan Opletal high school in Litovel. The students said their T-shirt would be a cheaper version of a smartwatch. The T-shirt would measure the wearer's heart rate or blood oxygen saturation, which would help to monitor a person's health. The team then highlighted an electromagnetic functional analyser, so-called EMA, as an important component that would analyse the composition of sweat. Based on the results, the person would then know that they are deficient in magnesium, for example, and need to supplement. According to the students, there would be a flexible PCB in the collar and sensors in the armpits. The product would also include a mobile app and charging system, and as a complement, perhaps integrated lighting or radar to detect an approaching car for runners. The team estimated the potential price of the product at CZK 2,500 and a lifespan of several years.
The Technology Olympiad aims to popularize the world of technology among high school students. The winning team will receive CZK 30,000, the silver team CZK 20,000 and the bronze team CZK 10,000. The prize includes admission to FEL CTU without entrance exams and a number of material prizes. This year, the winning team will also receive a prize from ŠKODA AUTO's general partner. You can watch all the student presentations in the recording of the final day at www.teol.cz. You can also find a video of the final on this website and on YouTube.
Last year's first edition was won by the Kosora team from the Mnichovo Hradiště high school, whose members Lukáš Soustružník, Dan Razák and Filip Kolomazník scored points with their presentation on wireless car charging. The solution was based on a resonant induction system with a coil that moves autonomously around the parking lot and recharges parked cars as needed.
The Technology Olympics project is run under the auspices of Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Ministry of Education; the general partner is ŠKODA AUTO and the expert guarantors are ČEZ a.s., GasNet s.r.o. and Unicorn a.s.
