Edinburgh Innovations Business Idea Competition – 2023

Joint First Prize Winner: Fast Wearable Keyboard for XR and Beyond

Nathan Sharp graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Science – he was awarded joint first prize and received a £400 Engineers in Business Prize

Nation’s basic idea is to develop a new ergonomic, fast and portable input device to supersede the keyboard (fast) and be suitable for XR (portable): think a game controller cut in half with more buttons!  Humans want to be free to move, think and work anywhere. Nathan’s design would:

1) Free computer users from desks, fixing a myriad of downstream health issues and opening countless new opportunities. For example, 60% of office workers will develop chronic mobility problems such as RSI.
2) Allow early adopters of VR/AR tech to experiment with native (portable) VR/AR desktop interfaces.

Nathan explained that this idea is special because nothing quite like it currently exists – if you want a wondering desk with keyboard + mouse functionality – if you want to experiment with VR/AR desktops – if you want to give a standing presentation moving whilst using a computer – work with an ergonomic keyboard in bed etc, this is it. Furthermore, it is a pivotal time at the onset of VR/AR computing.

The fourth major prototype iteration is being built; the third is fully usable as a keyboard replacement, just a bit slow and unergonomic.

Joint First Prize Winner: SukaLabs

Dileep Dasari, BEng Mechanical Engineering student – joint first prize winner awarded a £400 Engineers in Business Prize.

Dileep’s innovation is called SukaLabs.   He explained, “The world’s most challenging problem now is uncertainty about the effects of climate change, the global economy, natural disasters, and food security. Although machine learning and artificial intelligence have made many advancements, the existing models and algorithms couldn’t help with the uncertainty. SukaLabs aims to solve this uncertainty through its innovative and breakthrough algorithms.

Specialised time-series machine learning algorithms add to existing frameworks and massively improve their accuracy. For example, machine learning models related to climate, finance and medicine could be made with our algorithms for further breakthroughs. Initial tests have proven that the algorithms can create climate models to forecast weather patterns and extremities like heatwaves and hurricanes. One of the goals is to develop an app/online platform using the algorithms to forecast weather and extremities for long-range more reliable and accurate than conventional methods.

The algorithms have also created accurate financial models to forecast economic data and markets in initial testing. Another primary goal of SukaLabs is to create an easy-to-use app/platform for financial institutions and individual clients to access our accurate market forecasts made by our specialised algorithms.  SukaLabs can also offer customised data analytics services using the algorithms to other industries that rely on accurate forecasting.

Third Prize Winner: Precious Plastics

Chemical Engineering students Iris Picquart and Anne-Marie Thulstrup founded Precious Plastics – there were awarded a £200 Engineers in Business prize.

Precious Plastics is a project aiming to recycle polystyrene plastics used in the disposable coffee cup lids sold at the cafes on campus into useful objects such as a coaster. The goal is to construct and optimise a plastic-recycling machine in order to reduce the quantity of plastic waste on university campuses.

The process contains four steps: the pre-treatment of plastic, shredding, extrusion and 3D-printing. At the University of Edinburgh, 3,500 tonnes of waste are produced annually. While there is a waste management strategy plan within the university, with the goal of eliminating all plastic waste by 2042 by increasing the quantity of recycling systems and the categorising of waste, the construction of a plastic-recycling machine on campus would help solve issues such as contamination of waste and energy expenditure in the transport of waste from campus to the treatment plant. The outcomes of this project will therefore help benefit the local community of Edinburgh as well as the university.

In terms of the process, the pre-treatment involves the cleaning and de-sanitising of the lids so as to prevent contaminants from affecting the efficiency of the process. This is done using a water and sodium hydroxide solution. With more research, we hope to investigate how the plastic can be treated to change the colour.