Author: PMF

The team “Pannonian Crew” from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, consisting of Aleksandar Rončević, Mihailo Milenković, Petar Kapriš and Vladimir Krsmanović, all Computer Science students, won the first place in the national competition for the best technological innovation in the category of student innovations. They developed the innovation “Lara” – a system for automatic accident detection and rescue of sailors, which consists of hardware and software systems.

Last week, in the ceremonial hall of the Rectorate of the University of Belgrade, the competition finals were held in the category of Innovative Ideas, a subcategory of high school and student teams.

From the moment of the initial application, there were two qualification rounds in which business models as well as technical feasibility of innovations were analyzed. These talented young people, third-year students of Computer Science, even as high school students had contacts with associations such as Maker, through which they studied outside the classroom and expanded their horizons and ambitions. Although they study programming, they have very broad interests, from music and philosophy to electronics and economics. Vladimir Krsmanović had already been in contact with the shipbuilding industry and there he encountered the problem of overboard falls into the water from ships (Man-Overboard), which motivated him to work on this innovation.

Although the team “Pannonian Crew” gathered only for this competition, they individually have had competition experiences and brought success from other competitions such as national competitions in mathematics and programming, Google HashCode, Competition for the Best Technological Innovation in the high school category, etc.

This victory gave them additional confidence that there was real potential in their idea and that it was recognized, which paved the way for a much broader dimension of the innovation creation process. The plan of these young researchers is to continue developing the idea and to test it on real ships soon.