Congratulations to four students from our high school division: George Xie, Joe Zhang, Cheryl Xu, and Della Gong, who shone brightly at the Hackwell held in Pudong Area, Shanghai, from September 20th to 22nd. They not only demonstrated exceptional technical skills but also gained invaluable teamwork experience and sparks of innovative thinking.
This grand event brought together numerous technology enthusiasts from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and other places. The students were randomly assigned to groups of four and faced 12 challenging themes. They bravely chose their battlefields, ranging from remote health monitoring to maze-solving, each theme carrying endless imagination and exploration of the future. Our students focused on two areas: student happiness and AI-driven transportation optimization, continuously refining their solutions.
Before the event, the students actively participated in various workshops, from AI development to WeChat mini-program design, digital circuit exploration to VEX robot practical operations, and learning of cutting-edge technologies such as React applications, cybersecurity, and machine learning. Each attempt was a longing for knowledge, and each practice injected new vitality into their projects. These rich learning experiences not only broadened their horizons but also laid a solid foundation for the project challenges.
After two days of mind storm, project design, and code writing, George Xie and Joe Zhang, with their StarSailor Navigation System (SSNS) project, won the Best Creativity Award and the second place overall due to their unique algorithm application and innovative ideas, demonstrating their insightful understanding of the intelligent transportation field. Cheryl Xu and Della Gong, under the Productivity theme, proposed an innovative solution to enhance student happiness through teamwork, earning praise from the judges and other participants.
This Hackwell was not just a technological competition but also a spiritual baptism. It taught the students how to efficiently collaborate within limited time, find opportunities in challenges, and draw strength from failures. It was not just an experience of a competition but also a valuable asset on their growth journey, igniting their endless passion for technological innovation and laying a solid foundation for their future studies and life.
比赛感受Event Reflections
接下来，让我们一起聆听四位同学的心声，感受他们在这次比赛中的收获与感悟。
Let’s listen to the voices of these four students and feel their gains and insights from this competition.
On the afternoon of September 20th, Mr. Liu and I went to the airport for Shanghai together with several companions. The next day, we went to the competition venue together and participated in the opening ceremony. I was deeply impressed by the opening speeches of teachers and students, who expressed their enthusiasm and perseverance for scientific and technological innovation. “Innovation is a long-term process, which includes not only wisdom and dedication, but also love and enthusiasm”, which deeply touched us.
After that, the topic selection session, the host introduced various life problems including AI integration, such as AI remote monitoring of body conditions, AI water treatment system, AI interactive programming, AI education, etc. We chose what we felt was the most relevant to the problem at hand: AI transportation hubs.
Then we got to know our teammates and started working on the project, and finally decided to make a navigation system for land transportation: path planning, decision planning, autonomous driving (L3+ level), code-named “StarSailor Navigation System (SSNS)”. We use the c++ programming language to simulate the process of path planning and decision planning, and use the Arduino platform to test the automatic obstacle avoidance driving system.
After a day of intense debugging and development, we entered the last day of demonstration. Our demonstration was very successful. Both “technical dry goods” and project development were recognized by teachers. In the end, I and Boshang Zhang’s group won the “Best Idea Award” and the second overall score.
Through this activity, I also found a bright spot: this activity from the organization, Workshop, award, logistics are all led by students, implementation, planning, I think in the future we can also create such a similar activity, exercise and improve our ability.
I benefited a lot from this trip to HackWell in Shanghai, which not only broadened my horizons, but also allowed me to learn a lot of valuable experience in practice. HackWell brings together outstanding students from all over the country, and this highly competitive environment makes me feel humble and awestruck. Our team particularly realized the importance of cooperation, especially the challenge of completing complex projects in a short period of time.
In the two-day competition, we are racing against time and must complete the entire process from idea to product landing in a very short period of time. Although there were many challenges, our team performed very well, with everyone giving full play to their expertise and being able to communicate and collaborate effectively under high pressure. Finally, we completed the project named “StarSailor Navigation System” with Georgy Xie. This is a navigation system based on intelligent algorithms, which aims to improve the user’s travel experience by optimizing routes and precise navigation. Our idea was unanimously recognized by the judges and won the “Best Creative Award”, while also achieving the second-highest score in the overall evaluation.
Throughout the process, time management and task allocation have become the key to success. Whenever we encounter a bottleneck, team members will quickly brainstorm and propose innovative solutions to ensure the project can be carried out on time. We are not only aiming to complete the competition task, but also pursuing an ultimate experience of innovative spirit and teamwork. Through this competition, I deeply feel that in the development of technology projects, technology is important, but communication, cooperation and creativity are the core elements that truly drive project success.
This competition experience has made me more determined to achieve my goals, not only to improve my technical skills, but also to exercise myself in a team environment, learn to effectively manage time and allocate tasks in a tense atmosphere, and find innovative solutions. Through HackWell, I have seen my potential and become more aware of what I need to continue to work hard and improve in the future. This is not only a competition, but also a comprehensive growth experience.
This weekend’s trip to HackWell in Shanghai is a lot of new experiences. From the development of ideas to the preparation of presentation, we had put a lot of effort into the competition. We went through and felt every bit of the process, which is not something that had happened before. We realized how hard it is to “raise up” an idea from scratch, and how much you have to struggle before you can round up your whole logic. Secondly, the HackWell competition has a two-day (more precisely one and a half) agenda so that there’s not much time that we can spend on working on the project. Compared to Future City (usually we spend two months preparing) and the other project-based competitions, two days is really a short time of preparation. And in these two days, we have to do some research, come up with an idea, develop it, and finally present it in two minutes (that’s really short). For some teams, they even need to realize (at least a part) of their idea. This is something very new to me that I have only seen on videos, but now that I have experienced myself. This is a really interesting experience. Lastly, during the first day there was two workshop time, when we could choose among many of the workshops. I have chosen two related to robotics. The first workshop explained something that I already know, but the second one was really a new thing. It’s about using Python to recognize your hand gesture and position to control a robotic arm. I couldn’t fully understand the codes and how does it work, but that was the first time I have ever tried such a thing. I therefore knew how a project like this looks like, and that’s a step forward. So these are some of the significance of HackWell 2024 for me.
This trip to Hackwell was actually a very special experience for me. While first before the competition I wished to have some extroverted person in our group so that they would have start the conversation and it would be easy to communicate because I do believe that I don’t have the ability to start a conversation. However, after the grouping, when I finally met my groupmates, I had to start the conversation which pushed me a lot. There are only two days given to finish our project, a short amount of time given for us to put together our thoughts, do research, prepare our presentation, and present it in front of the judges for 2 short minutes. It is hard to put our ideas together and form a logical system. There might be all sorts of things that we haven’t thought about, with that little amount of time. It was to race against time, and everything was done in a hurry. While beside that I get to see all different kind of ideas make out by other presenters. Some use 3D- printing to show out their project, some uses coding to show their result. I’d also be able to attend workshops, that is said to provide us with ideas of how to do our project. The first workshop that I attended was called cyber safety, which talked about python, and I wasn’t familiar with it, so it turns out to be kind of nonsensical. The second workshop, however, was quite fun. It is about using python and recognizing your hand gesture to control a robotic arm. It is the first time that I have been trying to control a robotic arm, and it turns out to be super fun (while I never get to really understand how it works.). Even if there are some kind of hard experiences but it turns out to be good in the end.
——G9-2巩雨涵Della Gong
让我们以此次黑客马拉松为新的起点，继续在学习与创新的道路上勇往直前，期待下一次更加辉煌的相聚！
Let’s take this Hackwell as a new starting point, continue to forge ahead on the road of learning and innovation, and look forward to a more brilliant reunion next time!
