Impressive, Innovative Designs from Around the Globe at InnovateFPGA

InnovateFPGA Logo

The InnovateFPGA contest was developed as a way to expose and inspire engineers to design, create, and innovate. This year, DigiKey was honored to be a sponsor of the Grand Final Event. As a sponsor we were allowed on the panel of judges. The judge’s role is to evaluate the final 12 projects from around the world and help choose the grand prize winner!

The Path to InnovateFPGA

Prospective contestants had to register with InnovateFPGA and submit a project proposal that would use the DE10-Nano Kit as the basis of their project. Once the deadline for submitting proposals had passed, the InnovateFPGA community voted on which project proposals had the most potential and those that were voted into the next round received a free DE10-Nano kit to bring their idea to reality. The competition sees teams competing from all around the world including teams from the Americas, APAC (Asia-Pacific), EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), and Greater China.

Terasic DE10-Nano Development Kit

The next step in the contest was for each team to develop their projects using the DE10-Nano development kit. Per the directions, designers were allowed to utilize any boards that interfaced with the DE10-Nano (including Arduino shields!) in their project. With organizations like Terasic, Intel, DigiKey, and other sponsors’ technical support at their fingertips, the engineers had no shortage of resources. The end goal for each team was to have a complete design paper describing their project in detail as well as a demonstration video of the project. The video includes a live demo of the design along with an explanation of the theory and function of the project.

Narrowing the Field

Narrowing down the competition (while nowhere near as much work as these designers put in to their projects) was no easy task. There were Regional Semi-Finals, the Regional Final, and the Grand Final which narrowed it down to ten from each region, three from each region, and one Grand Prize winner, respectively.

The Grand Final Event

In the end there could be only one Grand Champion. The Grand Final event was held August 15^th at the Intel Campus in San Jose, California. The complete list of winners and projects can be found on the InnovateFPGA website. The Grand Champion this year was team AS015 with their Flex Force Smart Glove for Measuring Sensorimotor Stimulation.

Their focus for this project is based upon the large amount of stroke victims each year who become disabled. In order to aid in rehabilitation, the Flex Force Smart Glove (FFSG) allows for nonintrusive measurement of sensorimotor information from the force and rotation of the patient’s wrist and fingers. Ultimately this provides a low-cost wearable smart glove which will track the patient’s rehabilitation from the rehab clinic to their own home. The complete project can be viewed in detail on the InnovateFPGA Flex Force Smart Glove (FFSG) page.

Team AS015 is made up of Lloyd Emokpai, Roland Emokpae Jr., and Brady Emokpae (a family of two brothers and a cousin!). They were the grand prize winners of the $5,000 Grand Champion Award! DigiKey would like to thank all of the contestants involved for letting us be witness to all of these impressive FPGA designs!

Video of the winning team AS015 and their Flex Force Smart Glove (FFSG)