A team made up of five students from the Faculty of Technology (FT) at Unicamp, Limeira campus, and a student from Faculdade Claretiano passed the regional phase and received global nomination in the competition Space App Challenge, promoted by NASA, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In the challenge, they formulated an environmental education and awareness game, which competes with around 400 projects in the final evaluation.
The group is made up of students Lucas Barreto de Jesus (Telecommunications Engineering - FT); Cibele Naomi (Environmental Engineering - FT); Lucas Tadeu (Telecommunications Engineering - FT); Danilo Nogueira (Telecommunications Engineering -FT); Vitor Kogawa (Information Systems - FT) and Davi Beraldo (Systems Analysis and Development - Claretiano). The competition involved using raw data from NASA and other agencies and developing an application within 48 hours. In the initial stage, NASA reported 20 challenges, among which each team chose one to base their work on.
“They propose 20 challenges, each team chooses a challenge and needs to create an innovative solution for it. Although the competition calls it Space Apps, it is not necessarily a cell phone application. Our project is a game focused on sustainability and awareness”, explains Lucas Barreto.
The game, called One Choice One Future, was designed to be accessed on electronic devices, such as cell phones, computers and tablets. It asks questions about consumption habits. Cross-referenced with data about the city where the user lives, it provides scores that help understand how individual habits impact the city. Check out the video of the game evaluated by the NASA team and which earned global nomination:
“The game is aimed at children and young teenagers and is based on choices. The user has to make a choice, for example regarding meat consumption. Based on the questions and the database, for example what is the average temperature and CO2 in your region, the impacts on the planet will appear”, observes Cibele Naomi.
The objective, say the students, is to impact children and young teenagers so that they take this information home to their families. “It’s a game that raises awareness and encourages people to improve their habits. If the result is bad, the child will see what they 'got wrong' and what they can do better. These are the points that encourage people to do the right things that help the planet”, says Danilo Nogueira. In addition to scores, the game also displays informative messages about environmental impacts.
To formulate the application, the team used the Progressive Web Apps (PWA) programming technique, in which code is created that can be adapted to any device, without the need to develop it more than once. The experience of an interdisciplinary team, which brought ideas from different points of view to solve problems, was essential for obtaining a good result, say the students. With the nomination for the global phase, the students gained courses and consultancies and will be able, in the future, to improve their game.
The result of the final phase of the competition should be announced at the beginning of 2021. But, for the team, just the experience of participating was rewarding. Teamwork, for Lucas Tadeu, is evaluated as a learning experience. “Having integration helps to facilitate the process. This was one of the best weapons that made it easier for us to develop the application. We were always in the room, talking, each one working on what they could develop best, but the group as a whole carrying its baggage of solving problems. For me, it is an unparalleled experience”, he says.
