The winning team, Revolutionary Agricultural Technologies (RAT) includes Georgia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering students Aneeq Zia and Muneeb Zia. They made it to the Pakathon tournament in Boston, MA after beating the competition at their local event in Atlanta, GA.
Team RAT designed the Tensiometer. The tool is able to monitor soil water concentrations in a crop’s root zone. This will tell low-tech and low-income farmers when to irrigate their farms and how much water they need. In theory, this will increase yield while improving water and cost efficiencies.
Team RAT, Hackathon Global Winners: Muneeb Zia (left) and Aneeq Zia.
Zia said, “With future populations increasing and fresh water supplies decreasing, this device is in development to help solve the issue of over-watering crops, thus saving more water for human consumption and food growth.”
The head of the Packathon Atlanta chapter, Muhammad Asif Rana, mentioned that RAT stood out from the crowd by producing a physical tool as opposed to an app: “I think the main reason our winning team won the global competition was that they proposed an engineering solution … They provided an actual hardware prototype which was pretty novel. The other ideas were mostly apps.”
Packathon is a two-round, global hackathon competition. It takes place in 16 cities in the US, Canada and Pakistan. The first round determines the city representatives, who then move onto the global competition.
The competition’s mission is to provide developing nations, like Pakistan, sustainable companies, tools, and projects from entrepreneurs around the world. Though the competition is currently focused on Pakistan, the goal is to spread to other nations in need in the near future.
Source Georgia Tech.