It was tough competition this year for Embedded Development and the judges will definitely have their work cut out for them in deciding who will win tonight at the World Festival. One contender is the Korean team Wafree. Members Yoonji Shin, Kibum Kim, Youngbu Park created a way to tackle one of the United Nation’s toughest problems, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.
Their project’s goal was to help end world hunger by helping those affected by famine to become self-sufficient through the breeding of insects. Instead of grain farming, insect farming is a more agile practice, not subjected to the limitations of fertile crop lands. However, there is a problem, insects are fragile creatures that are extremely sensitive to environmental changes. What Wafree has done is create an embedded system that will allow users with no experience in breeding insects to use computers in order to make them more effective.
Although this may seem like a strange approach to the problem and some may find it difficult to look past the “eww factor” of raising bugs and eating them, there is a sense of true innovation behind this project that has already been gaining traction in Africa. They wrote that one of the highlights of the project was that they created a batch of “cookies with Lucanidae for the children in Gabon and the children loved the Lucanidae cookies and the first batch was gone before they set the basket on the table.” Using the Imagine Cup as means of perfecting their design, the team plans on incorporating the feedback they receive in order to accomplish their ultimate goal – end world hunger.
-Matt Bernardy
