COSIMA Award

Award winners 2024

1st place: Species protection in everyday life with humidity sensor and app

With myzelion, the team from the University of Ulm has developed an idea to make species protection possible in everyday life. "There is a study according to which a balcony with site-specific planting makes the same contribution to the ecosystem as a meadow," explains spokesperson Annika Köhler. "With myzelion, we want to make it easier for people to beautify their balcony or garden and contribute to environmental protection at the same time." The project includes a new type of moisture sensor that uses very little power and accurately measures soil moisture every 10 seconds, as well as an app that displays the results and includes a plant guide. Köhler notes: "We will definitely pursue the topic until it is ready for the market; the patent search was positive for us."

2nd place: Intelligent Shopping Cart for the Visually Impaired

The team from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University wanted to enable visually impaired people to participate fully in everyday life and enjoy a pleasant shopping experience. COSIMA 2024 awarded Smart Cart second place and prize money of €1,000 for the project. Spokesman Milan Ferus-Comelo explains: The trolley is equipped with two LiDAR sensors for obstacle detection. We also worked with a neural network for speech recognition to enable communication with the user via an app. The team worked with a leading shopping trolley manufacturer as well as associations and supermarket chains right from the project phase. After COSIMA, a pilot phase and participation in various start-up competitions are planned to prepare for a market launch.

3rd place: Monitoring the level of fluid bags in the care sector via an app

Elisabeth Höbel came up with the idea of developing a solution for easily monitoring the fill level of fluid bags in the care sector while working as a research assistant. The spokesperson for the SmartBagEco team at Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences explains: Whether at home, in outpatient care or on a hospital ward - always knowing when, for example, an infusion or catheter bag needs to be changed makes work easier and more comfortable for patients. SmartBagEco came third at COSIMA 24 and won a prize of €500. The system consists of a sensor that can be attached to the fluid bag and a clip-on electronic unit that the team designed and produced using 3-Druck. The sensor's readings are transmitted to a self-coded app that sends a notification when a certain level is reached. The response to our project has been great and we have been approached here at the show. We'll see how it goes,' says Höbel.

First special prize at COSIMA: multifunctional glasses for the hearing impaired

Due to the high quality of the projects, the 2024 jury decided to award a special prize in addition to the three prizes to SonoVision, a pair of glasses for the hard of hearing. It uses two LEDs to visually warn of audible hazards and an app to transcribe conversations, which are then displayed as text in the glasses in real time. There is no financial reward for this innovation, but the project team from the Technical University of Munich will be invited to the international iCAN competition in Switzerland along with the other winners.