The Ukrainian team HOW AI from Irpin took second place at the international finals of the Teens in AI hackathon, competing with participants from 101 countries. The schoolchildren presented an inclusive educational platform EyraLearning, which allows children with motor disorders to learn using eye movements.
The Ukrainian team HOW AI from Irpin took second place at the international finals of the Teens in AI hackathon, competing with participants from 101 countries. The schoolchildren presented an inclusive educational platform EyraLearning, which allows children with motor disorders to learn using eye movements.
The success of the developers was announced by the Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Oleksandr Bornyakov. The Ukrainians beat hundreds of competitors and lost in the final only to a team from the USA.
The browser platform works through a regular webcam and does not require additional special equipment. Integrated artificial intelligence adapts content to the user's needs, provides voice guidance and translates lessons into accessible formats. The system's algorithms have been calibrated on large data sets so that the technology can accurately recognize a child's gaze even in the presence of serious physical impairments.
More than 2.2 million children with physical disabilities cannot fully use touch screens or write. Because of this, they have a 42% lower chance of completing primary school. The technology of Ukrainians aims to solve this problem. The project was worked on by students of the Irpin Lyceum of Innovative Technologies: Maria Kovalenko, Sofia Bondar, Maria Zekunova, Nadia Shpyrok, Maryna Skudova and Kyrylo Matukhno, led by mentor Ivan Nechyporuk.
"Congratulations to the team and their mentor. You have come a long way from national selection to silver on the world stage. Thank you to the partners — the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Lviv IT Cluster, and TechMagic — for supporting the project in Ukraine," said Oleksandr Bornyakov.
The path to the silver award at the global level consisted of several stages. First, the developers from Irpin won the championship at the national selection, where more than 60 teams from all over the country competed. Subsequently, HOW AI entered the top five developments in the international semi-final, where they were able to strengthen the technical component of the project together with foreign mentors and prepare an English-language pitch for the global final.
