The CSIDC 2004 announcement has been done. So gear up IIT Kanpur.

The goal of the Fifth Annual Computer Society International Design Competition (CSIDC) is to advance excellence in education by having student teams design and implement computer-based solutions to real-world problems. The theme of this year's CSIDC is Making the World a Safer Place.

Announcement Notices:

›› Student Design Teams Sought for 2004 CSIDC (in PDF)

›› CSIDC 2004 Website

›› Fill in your team's application at the CSIDC Registration Webpage

›› IEEE Student Branch Chairman's Message informing the Undergraduates of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur, of this years CSIDC 2004 can be read below in:

EML format | Text format

›› CSIDC 2004 Media Anouncement Poster

Project Definition for CSIDC 2004

Making the World a Safer Place

One of the main strengths of the International Design Competition is the freedom it gives to students to be creative. There is no restriction on what you can do subject to the spending limit and the requirements of the project specification.

The theme of competition is Making the World a Safer Place. You are asked to take a PC, laptop, or hand-held computer and turn it into something new by adding an external interface and the appropriate software. Your application may use more than one computer and computers may be linked by any suitable medium.

We are looking for innovative applications of computers that fulfill a need in society. Part of the marks allocated to the final report will reflect your project's originality and its potential to affect society positively. A possible application might be a system that monitors the behavior of an elderly person and reports if their behavior begins to differ significantly from their normal pattern of activity. Such a system may use personal locators, low-cost web-cams or IR-sensors to track the person. You may have to develop a program using AI algorithms to determine when a person’s pattern of behavior changes. Another team may develop a system that helps automobiles to avoid collisions with other objects.

The system you design must include both hardware and software components. The hardware does not have to be a complex electronic system; it may be a simple as, for example, a temperature sensor.

The aim of the competition is to test your ability to work as a member of a team and to go through an entire "product design cycle". We are looking for teams that are able to combine design skills with software engineering skills. You should be aware of all aspects of your application; for example, there is little point in developing a financial system if you have not thought about security.

You are allowed to spend up to $400 on equipment such as an interface, sensors, transducers, or subsystems such as GPS (global positioning systems). The $400 does not include the cost of the computers themselves.

Software is not subjected to the $400 spending limitation, though teams should remember that the scoring of their project depends on the team’s originality. Projects consisting entirely of commercial software will be scored lower than projects that include software developed by the team.

The CSIDC website contains approximately 40 of the project from previous years. Learn from them. However, new projects must be original and not simply derivatives of existing projects. Taking a project from a previous competition and improving it will not succeed. For this reason, projects that are basically medical monitoring systems will not be accepted for CSIDC 2004 (this does not mean that your project cannot have a medical theme. It means that an EKG input plus a signal processing program will not be accepted because that has been used by several other teams and it is difficult to come up with something new).