To the competitions partaking in “TEKNOFEST Aerospace and Technology Festival,” which is held under the leadership of Turkish Technology Team Foundation and TR Ministry of Industry and Technology, and with the support of Türkiye’s leading technology companies, public institutions, media organizations and universities, more than 149 thousand teams and more than 500 thousand competitors applied this year.

Participating in the competition under the “Barrier-Free Living Technologies” category, which aims national technology move and social integration by prioritizing accessibility for health, inclusive education, independent living, disaster and humanitarian emergencies of individuals with special needs in accordance with TR Ministry of Family and Social Services “Vision without Disabilities 2030,” and taking part within the scope of IEEE Club and composed of our university’s students, KUASAR Team exhibited their works with the K-Rod Smart Walking Stick Project at the final stage in Trabzon  between August 5-7, 2022. 

İrem Nur Yıldırım (Team Captain & Reporting and Design Supervisor - Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering), Şevval Nur Dönmezler (Technical and Hardware Systems Supervisor - Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering), Furkan Karayel (Reporting and Design Supervisor - Department of Industrial Engineering), Elif Şeker (“Image Processing with Artificial Intelligence” Supervisor - Department of Mathematics and Computer Science), Faruk Emre Özcan (Technical and Hardware Systems Supervisor - Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering), Arda Yaşar Erdoğan (Communications and Database Supervisor - Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences) and Burak Şehitoğlu (Mobile Application Development Supervisor - Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering) are in our team, which has been working for about two years under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Dr Emel Yavuz, Co-Head of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences. 

Aiming to bring solutions to the issues that visually impaired people experience in daily life, such as the inability to identify objects around them, the inability to get to where they want without help in indoor areas, the uncertainties they face when using public transportation, KUASAR Team intends to ease its users’ lives by mobile application and many other features developed, and detect objects, give audible and vibrating notifications to the user, make indoor positioning by the sensors that identify objects using artificial intelligence in the K-Rod Smart Walking Stick developed by the team.

The results of the "Barrier-Free Living Technologies" category competed by our team, which also introduced its projects to TUBITAK President Prof. Dr. Hasan Mandal and attracted great interest, will be announced online at a later date. Teams ranking the highest will receive their awards at the event to be held in Samsun between August 30, 2022, and September 4, 2022.