With the business idea “Swim.me”, a mixed group of students from NTUA and the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) won the first prize in the Pan-European Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition (JA Europe Enterprise Challenge 2021) as part of its largest European Entrepreneurship Festival GEN-E Europe by JA Europe www.gen-e.eu.
The competition started online on June 29, 2021 with headquarters in Junior Achievement, Lithuania and culminated on Thursday, July 15, 2021 with the awarding of the first prize to “Swim.me” by the Commissioner for Labor and Social Rights of the European Union Nicholas Smith.
It is worth noting that this is the first time in the 16-year history of Junior Achievement Greece that a Greek team wins the first Pan-European award.
This joint team of NTUA-AUEB had won the first prize of the program “JA StartUp 2021” in the Panhellenic Competition of JA Greece held on May 28 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and Religions.
“Swim.me” is a “smart” system to help visually impaired swimmers to orient themselves in the pool. In the swimmer’s cap there are glasses with built-in sensors (gyroscope, accelerometer) so that the athlete is alerted with corresponding vibrations for the exact moment of the turn and for his relative position on the pool track. At the same time, the connection with waterproof ultrasonic sensors in the cap, gives greater accuracy to the system.
Finally, through an IoT application on the user’s mobile, there is data and analytics for the performance and development of the athlete in training. The device is addressed to both professional and amateur swimmers but also to children with total or partial blindness, giving them the opportunity for complete autonomy in the pool and enhancing their psychological mood.
