The annual Mayor’s Innovation Challenge invites post-secondary students from across Kingston to pitch their ideas to make the city of Kingston a better place.
Teams from Queen’s University, St. Lawrence College and Royal Military College, whose projects were selected for the final Pitch Competition, presented their work on March 14 at Kingston City Hall to a panel of leaders with expertise in municipal government, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Handfluence and Lawtonica, two teams of Queen’s students, won top prizes at this year’s competition!
All four team members of Lawtonica, the team which won the Public Sector Innovation Prize, are 1st year Computing students.
Ethan Stassen, Zain Al Sudani, Yafet Beyene, and Walelign Sumoro designed Lawtonica as an innovative AI tool that can simplify the process of finding and comprehending local bylaws. It uses a specialized AI chat named Tonica, which handles all the time-consuming research by searching through hundreds of pages of legal documents in a matter of moments.
The Handfluence team is comprised of Emil Mathew, 4th year Mechatronics and Robotics Eng., Derek Youngman, 4th year Computing, and Christopher Gill, who is in 3rd year Computing. Handfluence translates ASL to English in real-time, while an animated avatar converts English to ASL with proper grammar and structure. The program has an added haptic option for Deaf-Blind users. This innovative technology can help bridge the gap between Deaf and hearing individuals in banks, hospitals, and city government offices.
Queen’s School of Computing congratulates our students on their success and their contribution to the Kingston community.
You can find more information about the winning teams, the competition, and the prizes, on the City of Kingston website.