Innovate, Automate, Create: Rehrig Pacific's Epic Hackathon Projects

The New Product Development Tech Department at Rehrig Pacific recently held an epic Hackathon, during which three innovative projects were developed. The event was a remarkable success, allowing the team to learn, have fun, and make a significant impact on the community. The projects provided valuable experience with generative AI and large language models and advanced the development of one of our products to make it more like KITT from the old TV show Knight Rider!

Team 1 – Computer Vision® Fall Detection

At Rehrig Pacific, Family comes first. This project aimed to support our teammate Rama Rachakonda's family. His daughter, Parnika, who is non-verbal and has Rett syndrome, requires constant supervision due to her condition, which includes symptoms like epilepsy, osteoporosis, seizures, unstable walking, and low immunity. The team's goal was to provide Parnika’s caretakers some personal time while ensuring Parnika's safety, particularly from falls.

The team used computer Vision® machine learning technology to detect falls, like what we use for our commercial products with VOR. They used a trained pose estimation model that provides the coordinates of many skeletal features and developed an algorithm that detects falls from these skeletal coordinates. Multiple cameras were ordered to ensure complete room coverage with no blind spots.

Once a fall is detected, an Alexa announcement will be triggered across all devices in the home. Rehrig Pacific is providing an Amazon Echo with a battery base and an Echo Dot as part of the solution. Due to Amazon's API restrictions, a community leader donated the necessary hardware that is not commercially available to initiate these announcements. The team used a microcontroller and technology similar to the Delivery IoT brain on our Duo Lift to make the announcement part of the solution possible.

By implementing this system, we hope to alleviate some of the stress on Parnika’s caretakers, allowing them to have peace of mind knowing that Parnika is being monitored effectively. This innovative solution showcases our technical capabilities and highlights our commitment to supporting our team members and their families in meaningful ways.

Additionally, our team open-sourced the code and wrote an article on this project to help others who may want to create something similar. Follow this link for more:
Fall Alert System with YOLOv8 Pose Estimation & Alexa

Team 2 – Top Secret Project

Due to ongoing patent considerations, this team's work is top secret and cannot be discussed in the public domain. Suffice it to say, this innovation makes one of our products as advanced as KITT from the old TV show Knight Rider!

Team 3 – Hackathon Project: AI-Generated Wall Art

This project’s goal was to let the people at the Rehrig Technology Center customize the office environment by providing an interface to create art displayed on a wall-mounted TV. It integrates AI technology to generate images based on user text descriptions.

The setup includes a wall-mounted TV connected to the network and a website that receives and displays AI-generated images. Users can submit their image ideas through a web portal launched from a QR code, Alexa skill, or email. To ensure there is always something interesting on display, the team created default prompts that reflect Rehrig Pacific values.

For safety and appropriateness, a chatbot will also screen and optimize user-submitted prompts for image generation. The project involves several sub-teams: one for mounting the TV and connecting the Chromecast to Wi-Fi, another for figuring out how to send images to the Chromecast, and a team for creating the interfaces and services that accept prompts, generate images, and send them to the Chromecast. The team wrote creative prompts for every day of the year.

This project adds a creative and dynamic element to the office environment and demonstrates our ability to integrate AI technology into everyday workplace applications.

The Rehrig Pacific New Product Development Tech Department Hackathon highlighted our team's ingenuity and commitment to making a difference. We look forward to the lasting impact and innovative ideas these initiatives will inspire.