Victoria

Year 3 – 4

First Place

Rubbish Sorter
Chloe Fabian, Nancy Atem
St Joseph’s School Collingwood

This project is a rubbish sorter that uses machine learning AI to sort rubbish in our school. At our school we are learning about looking after our environment and trying to make our school more sustainable. We currently only have 3 bins at our school, general waste, paper/card and compost. We are hoping that with the rubbish sorter our school will be able to get more bins so that we can reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. The sorter will help to teach students and teachers what rubbish can be recycled instead of put into the landfill bin.

Second Place

The Eye Guard
Eric Fan
Caulfield Grammar School

According to the data from IAPB (The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness), there are 1.1 billion people live with vision loss globally. 90 million children and adolescents live with sight loss, 2 million of those children are blind, 30 million experience moderate to severe sight loss, and 58 million experience mild sight loss. Besides the vision loss, there could be other potential criminal risks for those children such as being kidnapped and abducted by strangers. The children can not recognise the criminal offenders’ faces and those bad people could pretend to be the children’s relatives or friends in order to abduct them. The design of the Eye Guard is to help and protect children with low vision to avoid danger from those criminal offenders. The Eye Guard is a small device that weak-vision children can hang in front of their chest, like wearing a pendant. We will pre-set up a database that has the images of the child’s family members and close friends, then we will write a program with a built-in camera to run a face recognition system while the child pushes a start button. When someone is talking to a weak-vision child who is wearing the Eye Guard, the child can simply press the start button or turn on the switch at the back of the device to trigger the face recognition system. If the person’s face is in the database, the built-in speaker says “Recognised, safe”. If the person’s face is NOT in the database, the built-in speaker says “Not recognised, pay attention”. The words will be repeated 3 times if the face cannot be recognised. Therefore, the Eye Guard is more likely a mini alarm device for children with visual disabilities.

Third Place

Shopping Car
Kang Ngor, Diana Atem
St Joseph’s School Collingwood

This project is a robotic shopping car that can help people with disabilities or illness get their shopping without leaving the house. This project was inspired by the COVID Pandemic where some people found it difficult to leave the house to do their shopping. The robotic car will be controlled by a controller and will ideally have senses to be able to navigate to the shops.

Year 5 – 6

First Place

Friend Bot
Danelle Lomas, Jorden Carver, Harley Davis
Mahogany Rise Primary School

Mahogany Rise is a school with about 150 children. We love technology and we’ve noticed most of the juniors have been hanging out with the seniors and we want them to get along with other juniors. We are producing a Friend Bot that allows you to have a friendly relationship with it, it will always keep a smile, and can move.

We are using the Lego Spike Prime kit with motors, lighting up facial expressions and much more!

Second Place

Keep Your Cool
Austin Davis, Ethan Kuyunzhi, Enzo Tierny, Ayden Benis
Rowellyn Park Primary School

Our project is designed to reduce injuries (or worse) in hot cars. Inside the car is always a few degrees warmer than outside. Our extra safety features work by a coded micro bit temperature sensor that will sense if the temperature rises over 25 degrees, then it will immediately turn on a fan to cool down the inside of a car. An incident we heard about on the news where a child was left in a car and overheated in the car. This inspired us to create Keep Your Cool. A child shouldn’t be left in a car, but our project applies to any situation where heat can be dangerous or damaging. It can also be used when food (especially chocolate), flowers and devices such as phones and laptops or other items need to be temporarily left in a car.

Third Place

Food Robot
Hasal DM, Yashvin SK, Gursahaj SC, Arshvik S
Willmott Park Primary School

Our aim in this project is to successfully program and create a robot that delivers lunch orders from our school’s canteen and back. Programming this specific robot which we have decided on, which will either be with an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, will help students not miss valuable learning/reflection time to walk to the other side of school in order to get their orders for lunch. Using various tools and programs, this project will help us engage in technology and also create a solution which will help make others’ lives easier.

Year 7 – 8

First Place

Purple – Mental Health
Milana Kumykova
Haileybury

At a time where mental health is on the decline, and over 320 teenagers are taking their own life per year, it is important to make it clear that these are things that should be talked about. However, as young people ourselves, we have found that not only is it not addressed properly, but we don’t find that people are exactly itching to open up to adults. Purple. is a chatbot designed for adolescents aged 12-17 years old, based in Australia, and it provides not only an anonymous experience for the user, but all information is credible and sourced from relevant sources, such as Beyond Blue. However, it doesn’t end there, as we at Purple. believe that positive experiences drive positive mental health, and many studies have backed this up. Therefore, we have partnered with Red Balloon and created a program that analyses all the data of users and then finds suitable experiences. Not to mention, funds raised from Purple Plus members will potentially make them eligible to win a fully funded experience from Red Balloon. Purple. isn’t just a chatbot – with it, we hope to promote positive mental health and let teenagers across Australia experience fun and pleasant memories.

Second Place

FoodBridge
Yhonatan Carmeli
Aerobotics Global

In a world where food waste and homelessness are critical social and environmental concerns, FoodBridge aims to make a positive impact by connecting restaurants with surplus food to homeless food organizations in need. Through an innovative mobile app, FoodBridge facilitates seamless communication and collaboration, allowing restaurants to easily donate excess food and homeless food organizations to access available food resources. By bridging the gap between these two entities, FoodBridge strives to reduce food waste, alleviate hunger, and contribute to building a more sustainable and compassionate society

Third Place

The Underwater Seaweed Drone Inspection Investigation
Daniel Fennessy, Cooper Dunn, Dilvin Lokuge, Nathaniel Song, Samuel Zhang
Haileybury

As we have researched, seaweed absorb CO2 (Carbon Dioxide), then any other plant in the world. Seaweed can be the crucial factor to help save the world from the extreme levels of Carbon Dioxide that is in our airs. But there is a predator to this, the sea urchin.

We are designing an underwater drone which can identify sea urchins on seaweed. At the same time, we are placing a pump that can take water from the lake for testing, if it is suitable for seaweed to live in

Seaweed is extremely beneficial to the environment. It can take in carbon dioxide quicker than most trees and it can also be used as a healthy type of food. Therefore, we are designing an underwater drone to detect the main predator of seaweed, the sea urchin.

The data will be picked up using Teachable Machine and transferred to a Raspberry Pi and demonstrate on a screen.

Year 9 – 10

First Place

Firetrace
Jill Xu, Joel Tan
John Monash Science School

Firetrace is an AI model and web interface that uses projected weather data to predict the severity of bushfire events at a continental scale. It uses a deep neural network trained on temperature and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI – a measure of La Nina and El Nino events) information from BOM, fire information from NASA’s MODIS satellite as well as date information to represent seasonality and climate change trends. Severe bushfire events cause sudden habitat loss, endanger many animal species and drastically impact the economy. Accurate modelling of bushfires has the potential to inform future policy decisions and prepare for the challenges of a bushfire event..

Second Place

Exercise posture checker
Jamie Usatov
Aerobotics Global

The app checks the user’s exercise and returns if the posture/form of the exercise is correct or not.

The android studio is used to develop the android interface with backend Python code to use AI where trained models of each exercise get called to check the posture.

Third Place

Eco-Solution
Arnav Bagal
John Monash Science School

Eco-Solve is an environmental education program that allows users to learn more about the environment and sustainability in general. Users can do this by doing quizzes or playing a mini-game.

The underlying intention of the project was to educate users about the environment. The initial idea was to make quizzes and then changed to making a mini-game. But the final and current idea involves combining all of the above to make a website that contains quizzes, and a mini-game to make the most engaging product so far, under the name of Eco-Solve.

Sometimes, the code was not working properly when certain functionalities were added or for no reason whatsoever. In order to mitigate these problems, the functionality was slightly changed, and the code was debugged.

Year 11 – 12

First Place

Machine Learning to Combat Antibiotic Resistance
Arlene Kaur Dhillon
John Monash Science School

Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue within medicine and science which has the potential to cause severe harm. Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, leading to their growth rather than halting it. Antibiotic resistance is putting the achievements of modern medicine at risk (World Health Organisation 2020), as more bacterial species develop resistance to antibiotics and spread globally, there is a decline in the development of new antibiotics due to the high costs, low profitability, and the likelihood of other bacterial species developing resistance. To

close the gap in antibiotic resistance research, a machine learning program was created, focusing on how scientists, researchers, and doctors can combat antibiotic resistance. The aim of the program is to use molecular descriptors to assess how specific chemical modification to the structure of the compound would alter its biological activity. The project was chosen by the urgency and increasing number of antibiotic resistance bacteria such as Methicillin – Resistant Streptococcus Aureus, Vancomycin resistant Enterococcus and multi – drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Pneumoniae (BetterHealth). There were many problems which were encountered during this project.

However, the overall concept of the project was carried out enough to adhere to the aim and the purpose of the machine learning model.

Second Place

Shopping Made Easy
Karshin Sachdeva, Ethan Zhu
Haileybury

Based on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 60% of people aged 85 years or above have a physical disability that potentially impairs their ability to move. As a result, it is essential that they have access to technology that can help them efficiently navigate through shopping malls or grocery stores without feeling fatigued. Our app, which utilises meta-heuristic algorithms such as Simulated Annealing and the A* Algorithm tackles the well-known Travelling Salesmen Problem by helping those with mobility impairment to find the shortest path between a desired set of stores they want to visit. Following Cobham’s thesis, the app remains computationally tractable as it maps out the shortest and most optimal path users should take around the mall to minimise fatigue and maximise efficiency.

Third Place

AeroFence
Jamie Jee, Benjamin Pringle, Elizabeth Yap, Marcus Chan
John Monash Science School

The AeroFence is an innovative gate/fence system harnessing renewable wind energy. It features hidden slim wind turbines with a blade covering facing the street. Wind turbines rotate, generating clean electricity for homes or the grid. Advanced sensors in each blade detect wind direction, optimizing wind capture. The AeroFence integrates renewable energy into the gate or fence, blending into surroundings. Its adaptive design ensures efficient wind utilization. The AeroFence offers a practical and aesthetically pleasing solution to harness wind energy for a greener future.