The Ann Arbor-based Hertz Alerts won a recent connected vehicle hackathon hosted by Ann Arbor SPARK and Redwood City, Calif.-based NestGVS.
Sam Harrell and Harrison Steves developed the winning app at a recent Ann Arbor SPARK connected vehicles hackathon.
Sam Harrell and Harrison Steves, the Hertz Alerts developer team, used the 26-hour competition to create an award-wining application, which is expected to improve a customer’s pickup and return experience. The two worked with the Hertz programming interface and iBeacon technology to develop the app.
Teams at SPARK Central and NestGSV were given challenges by Hertz, AT&T, Mojio and Gracenote. The teams from Michigan and California worked head-to-head through a remote feed, and judged by Towersec CEO Saar Dickman, technology executive Roger Jollis, and Michigan eLab co-founder and general partner Doug Neal.
Hertz Alerts won the Hertz challenge track grand prize, an Xbox One Titanfall Bundle, as well as the Ann Arbor grand prize of $10,000 of business acceleration services from SPARK and a TK1 development kit from NVIDIA.
“Besides providing a collaborative tech event for developers in the region, Ann Arbor SPARK's goals for the hackathon were to make those on the west coast aware of talent in the Ann Arbor region, and to attract California companies to Michigan,” Paul Krutko, Ann Arbor SPARK president and CEO, said in a statement.
“The hackathon was also a great chance to show software developers in Silicon Valley the connected vehicle activity here in Michigan.”
Other Ann Arbor hackathon winners included a team from Detroit-based Apigee , and Jim Barstow of Ann Arbor-based Dynamic Edge. The Apigee team won NVIDIA’s shield gaming platform, while Barstow won $1,000 cash. University of Michigan-Dearborn team Creative Computing Club was awarded “judges choice” for its hackathon efforts.