AIRMove Wins London Tech Week Hackathon

A team of 3, Frank Vitetta, Alessandro Francia and Rob Finean wins the HACKXLR8 in the London Tech at the ExCel London

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Jun 16, 2017, 13:00 ET

LONDON, June 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- An AIRMove team of 3, Frank Vitetta, Alessandro Francia and Rob Finean has won the HACKXLR8 in the London Tech Week at the ExCel London that took place the 14-15 of June.

Frank Vitetta, co-founder of smart office furniture business modoola, told the jury that AIRMove wants to crowdsource air pollution detection. By creating a smart IOT device, AIRMove wants to collect and store air quality data against location coordinates. The smart device could be fitted onto a bike or bus, as a stand-alone device, or part of a different system.

Pollution is a big killer in the UK, according to a study by Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, air pollution is contributing to about 40,000 early deaths a year in the UK.

And invisible pollution kills about 9,000 people every year in London. During the hackathon, AIRMove found out that it is extremely expensive for any city to install and maintain air quality sensors across the city. Each device currently costs over £1,000 and it needs regular maintenance.

During the 2 days, AIRMove team put together a low-cost device using just off the shelf parts bought online. Rob Finean built a prototype using a particle detector and a hardware development board with an Arduino chip and Bluetooth, all for less than £50. Alessandro Francia built a mobile app using Reactive Native that displayed the data collected by the sensors on a Google map.

"We need help from TFL and the Mayor of London to help us to bring this idea to life," states Frank Vitetta from AIRMove. "We know that citizens care about air pollution and there simply aren't currently any sources of information for real-time updates."

"If we could use the Santander bike fleet to start with, we could collect an immense amount of data that we could save lives."

Applications are endless. Property search engines could use the data to display ozone levels as an additional data point to property buyers or renters. Mobile navigation apps like city mapper could display the less polluted route to work.

Media Contact:
Frank Vitetta
Phone: +44 (0) 7979 676656
Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE AIRMove