Previous Student Projects
Read all about the fantastic and innovative ideas created by our 'Design Your Future City' participants right here!
Dim the Lights
Team members: Aliyat, Ebony, Michael, Vlad, Caoilinn, Taiwo
What challenge are you hoping to solve?
Overstimulation in public spaces is a big challenge, especially affecting people who are neurodivergent, elderly or pregnant.
Up to 90% of neurodivergent people have heightened senses and often experience sensory overload and overstimulation. People who experience overstimulation can have extreme emotional or physical discomfort. Our idea, Dim the Lights, aims to address this challenge!
How does your idea work?
Dim the Lights are sensory pods that can be installed in any busy street or public park. With calming lights and comfortable seating, the pods offer people who are feeling overstimulated a safe space to relax. The pods are wheelchair-friendly, require no payment and will be easily accessed through an online booking system.
Ex-Able
Team members: Nathan, Alyssa, Dominic, Ethan
What challenge are you hoping to solve?
Our idea is called Ex-Able, a car chair designed for wheelchair users, for the elderly or any person who has reduced mobility. Our project’s aim is to enable people living with disabilities to enter a vehicle smoothly and efficiently, providing both comfort and accessibility.
Our inspiration for this idea came from the documentary ‘Breaking Boundaries’ by inspirational speaker Jack Kavanagh. In this documentary we see Jack completing everyday tasks as a wheelchair user. One such task was attempting to get into a car however this task proved uncomfortable and time consuming for Jack. Our idea aims to solve this problem.
How does your idea work?
The ExAble chair autonomously moves a certain angle and height to assist people with reduced mobility to gain easy access into their car, either on the passenger or driver side.
We’ve also thought of some ideas to improve the quality of the chair, features such as:
Adding an app where a series of commands will be shown, such as automatically fasten the seatbelt, lower or raise chair height. We envision this app could work via Bluetooth or voice commands.
We’ve also thought of an inbuilt air condition system, this is for the elderly living in humid/hot countries as they are vulnerable to heat stroke.
Green Spaces
Team members: Nicholas, Candace, Amy, Aliyat, Grace, Hannah Rose, Mattie
What challenge are you hoping to solve?
Our idea ‘Green Spaces’ is hoping solve the following challenges related to parks and recreational areas in our cities:
Lack of green spaces to positively affect the natural environment
Increased privatisation of local green spaces
Lack of public space for young people to enjoy
Lack of green spaces that are safe, welcoming and big enough
How does your idea work?
We have designed the ‘Green Spaces’ app that can be accessed on your phone or laptop with a voice activated AI feature so you can manoeuvre the app with your voice, making the app more user-friendly for all. On the app, users will be able to locate parks in their community and will be able to add their own comments, tips and suggestions that will help improve local green spaces.
The app will also have information that will further educate people about sustainability with the overall aim of making our towns and cities greener!
Intellistix
Team members: Aimee, James, Eva, Reyan, Laura, Sean
What challenge are you hoping to solve?
Our invention ‘Intellistix’ is aiming to help blind people commute around cities. We want to give blind people back their independence.
At least 2.2 billion people have a vision impairment world and roughly 54,000 people in Ireland are blind or vision impaired. With this comes both physical health and mental health issues. For physical health, there is an increased risk of falling. Blind people can suffer through a sense of loneliness, social isolation and feelings of worry, anxiety and fear.
How does your idea work?
The basic ‘Intellistick' comes with many features to aid visually impaired people in their everyday lives:
The stick will have a 3D mapping sensor that will map the surrounding area and will vibrate to make the person aware of objects around them.
The stick will also send messages through speech to the persons airpods to give them a sense of what's around them
We also introduce an app where it can map the area and upload all the information to the system that can be used to inform other blind people
The app will also be used to build a community of blind people where they can socialise in their own personal way, for example going for a walk.
