Brisbane Boeing Hackathon 2018
An exciting weekend at #ThePrecinct where Jeremy Lai, Liam Dale, Giselle Brooks, Klein Geard, and I teamed up to tackle a Boeing mission control problem of routing drones to inspect a large amount of POIs efficiently.
The #BoeingHackathon offered five different challenges to tackle, ranging from network security to image analysis. We picked the route planner topic after careful consideration of our team skills and makeup. Many of us had skills in Python and web development, so we chose to develop a web-based solution using the Django framework.
Our initial foray saw us coming together to quickly visualise the point-of-interest data we have been given, a whopping set of 1678 places to visit for one busy drone. Key challenges to overcome would be:
- Setting up a solution platform that can be developed simultaneously by the team to maximise time efficiency
- Identifying which algorithm could compute the best path in less than a minute
- Optimising path(s) for battery use and recharging
- Optimising path(s) to return home every 600km to swap out camera SD card
Our final solution made use of the K-nearest Neighbours algorithm as it was able to generate a fairly optimal path within the allowed time for the entire dataset. It integrated the stretch goal requirement for the SD card swap out, but in a fairly hack way that would see the drone return home every 600km, then continue its regular path.
We also attempted to produce better results by making use of the Google OR-Tools suite, using an implementation of the solution to the Vehicle Routing Problem (an extended version of the Travelling-Salesman Problem). This produced more optimal routes, and could fairly easily be extended to solve all the stretch goals, but unfortunately we ran into problems with processing time, finding that the OR-tools solution could only run on 200 data points in approximately one minute. In the below image you can see the three generated routes in different colours, all returning to the starting point as necessary for SD card swap out.
Whilst we didn't manage to solve the problem in total over the 2 days, we definitely learned a lot and had a fun time. #Boeing did a great job with their first ever #hackathon, and I must admit it was my first hackathon too. The Boeing team was friendly and helpful and what's more, the food and coffee was great. Looking forward to getting the team together again next year and tackling the next new challenge they will throw our way!