Ukrainian team won the main competition of Microsoft Imagine Cup

A team from Ukraine won the main competition of one of the world's largest international student innovation competition Microsoft Imagine Cup, which ended on Tuesday in Sydney, RIA Novosti reported.

Ukrainian team quadSquad from Donetsk developed a conversion system of gestures used by deaf to a voice message. A special glove equipped with a set of accelerometers detects motion of the user and convert them to messages on your smartphone's screen or to voice messages.

We are very excited about our victory and hope to organize a really working project in a short time to help the dumb persons, - team’s member Maxim Osika told RIA Novosti.

Thanks to our families for their patience and for the time we were soldering chips in the kitchen - adds another team’s programmer Anton Stepanov.

The second place in the competition was won by Japanese team members Coccolo who developed an intelligent energy-saving system for the matched operation mode of LED lamps in the premises.

The third place was won by Portugal team wi-Go with a robot-conveyor project to make life of people with disabilities easier.

The top three teams will receive awards of $25K, $10K, and $5K respectively.

In addition to the main competition there were six thematic events to create programs for Windows Phone, Metro-eight applications for Windows, games, etc within the Imagine Cup.

Microsoft Imagine Cup Finals in the summer 2013 was held in Russia for the first time. The president of Microsoft Russia Nikolai Pryanishnikov received a flag at Sydney’s arena - a symbol of the competition.

Such a large-scale competition in St. Petersburg should encourage the development of Russian high-tech startups’ ecosystem, according to Microsoft representatives. Next year the corporation will increase the prize fund twice as much, up to $300K.

Microsoft partners for the international finals of Imagine Cup 2013 in Russia are the Agency of strategic initiatives and the Skolkovo Fund.

Russia was represented in the final by a team of Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics (TUSUR), which developed a system of early larynx disease detection (such as cancer of the larynx) based on voice analysis.

Tomsk team that called itself Bonjour Development, includes three seniors. Despite the setback in the finals, they are going to continue the development of the project.

Imagine Cup is one of the largest competitions of students’ innovation activities, which is organized every year since 2003 with the support of Microsoft and other companies and nonprofit organizations. During the ten-year history 1.7 M students from 190 countries took part in the competition. Participants must think how information technologies can help to solve complex global problems of today.