What do meetings, painting, motors, assistance for vision-impairment and shopfloors have in common? They were all part of CDTM’s first 2018 Design Fair in January this year! Almost 400 students, academics, business representatives, and CDTM alumni had come together to experience what the presenting teams had been developing during their MPD course, since early fall 2017. With high excitement the 25 students pitched the value of their unique solutions to an audience of entrepreneurial enthusiasts.
Full House at the CDTM Design Fair in January 2018: Around 400 students, academics and business representatives showed up to see the exciting pitches the CDTM students were going to present
“What if a component had its own identity?” the audience expectedly waited for the next words… “We are introducing… brix”. A strong bass turned on – everyone shivered when the song accompanying team brix’ product video started. Together with Rolls-Royce Motors, Team Brix’s developed a product to track motor-components over their lifetime by using RFID and Blockchain technology. A solution for the B2B segment, that could finally solve the problem of unknown components within motors after the component leaving the factory.
Team Floorsight in front of their booth, where interested visitors were allowed to test the product after the presentation
Team Floorsight inspired excitement among the audience with a solution to track worker movements on the shopfloor. Why does that help? Whenever a problem occurs and there is an interruption of the work or the machine, the movement tracking notifies a supervisor or another worker to help. The team showcased their product live on the stage, showing how movements were transformed into data. Further, they intended to support the worker with work instructions on the wearable smartwatch their product was based on.
“Don’t we all love meetings?” That’s what team sono wanted to fool us with. The audience shouted “No! No!”, until team sono revealed their solution to end the time of boring meetings by using the technology of augmented reality. Creating a shared environment to collaborate in meetings, the team tackled meetings in the automotive industry. Car designs were manipulated, presentations discussed and automatic meeting minutes created – all directly on stage within the augmented reality product demo. With another few years and advancement of the AR technology, team sono forecasts teams with AR glasses in the meeting room of the future.
Team CU showcasing their 3D-camera-based navigation solution for visually impaired people
Then suddenly all lights turned off. “Our World is beautiful…”, one could hear profound words out of the speakers. “But what if you cannot see anything of it? What if you’re blind?” Lights turned on. “You just have one tool – a stick. Is this what we can offer in 2018?” Alex, one of the teammembers shows the blindstick to the audience. ”We don’t believe so. We are CU – We want to help visually impaired people to explore the world.” Having caught everyone’s attention they then introduced their 3D-Camera-based navigation system with haptic feedback for blind people. A solution that created quite some attention in the German media for the team and its project partner and CDTM-affiliated start-up, FRAMOS.
All in all, the first 2018 design fair was a worthy ending for the months of hard work the teams look back on. One could see the delight and proud of all team members, when they stormed the stage after the final presentation to take a group picture and celebrate together. Again, exiting business ideas and impressive software and hardware products were presented in stirring and creative pitches. CDTM is proud of the ideas and concepts that came out of MPD of Class Fall 2017, and already excitingly looks forward to fresh and innovative ideas of Class Spring 2018 at the next design fair!
Class of Fall 2017: Having started their journey at the CDTM in August 2017, they have just finished their Managing Product Development (MPD) Seminar in February
