In Toronto, Canada, always looking for ways to connect better with attendees, the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) started the Innovation Garage in 2016. For 3 days, it will showcase Entrepreneurial and scholastic leaders intent on changing our world. Yes, there’s a $25K grand prize, but also, there’s the intent to drum up interest in each of their initiatives. There are also workshops and panels for those interested in coding or learning about other interesting pursuits.
We had a chance to speak with a few of the presenters, and were very impressed with what they had come up with.
Makelab brought their digital graffiti kit, as a greeting at the door of the event, a nice way to start off the entire presentation. Essentially mocked up spray can with a light in the nozzle of the camera, and a camera behind a screen that senses where the spray is. The effect is some fun painting experiences.
The Code Mobile is a great coding initiative focused on getting primarily girls coding, but provides learning opportunities to both girls and boys. They travel across Canada in their van bringing coding on the way. The real benefit here is perhaps some rural areas may not have access to resources to learn coding in RL. You can request a visit along their tour path. Right now, they’re in Toronto, but they’ve really been all over, coast to coast.
At Brazemobility they were showing off their wheelchair sensors that alerted people using wheelchairs how close they were to things behind them. These sensors could then alert their users via vibration pads located on various parts of their body so that those with sight or hearing issues could still receive information.
Aorte Fitness is showcasing a forward-thinking harness that joins a physio therapy apparatus with sensors and tracking that then feeds this information into a larger tracking mechanism to map out a patient’s progress. The rig was inspired by real world mobility issues, and has already assisted in pathing the companies head to recovery.
Little Robot Friends is showing off their introduction to coding through the use of a programable toy. Building and programming a small piece of tech is a tangible way to get kids into something that they may not be all that interested in otherwise.
If you’re in the Toronto Area and headed for the CNE, I strongly suggest you make your way to the Innovation Garage, and check out some of the great people and ideas going on here.