{"id":5442,"date":"2020-02-21T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.hexagonmining.com\/?p=5442"},"modified":"2025-10-24T12:52:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:52:45","slug":"nurturing-tech-talent-at-hack-arizona-6-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hexagonmining.com\/en\/nurturing-tech-talent-at-hack-arizona-6-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurturing tech talent at Hack Arizona 6.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

When people think of Tucson, Arizona, they don\u2019t always think of technology innovation. But for one weekend in January, hundreds of students from across the University of Arizona holed up in the Gould-Simpson building to create innovative software and hardware solutions. The students were participating in Hack Arizona 6.0.<\/p>\n

Since it began in 2015, Hack Arizona has grown to be one of the largest collegiate hackathons in the country. Teams of up to four compete for 36 hours to win prizes from some of the largest tech companies in the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a chance for students to show their creativity and technical prowess,\u201d said Eric Hambright, Development Manager at Hexagon\u2019s Mining division. \u201cIt is a great opportunity to get the word out to the University students, especially computer science majors, that we are a technology company and always looking for talented people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Eric Hambright and Shewangizaw Astatike judge a team participating in Hexagon\u2019s hackathon challenge.<\/p><\/div>\n

This year, Hexagon sponsored two prizes: the best use of geolocation and the best use of data visualization.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our products rely on geolocation,\u201d Hambright said. \u201cOur fleet management, our safety products all use geolocation data. For mine planning, we use a lot of data analytics and visualization to help cut losses and maximize profits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sonic and Tails to the rescue<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We awarded the best use of geolocation prize to Team 35: Sonic Adventure 3<\/a>. They created a solution for finding people during natural disasters with aerial and ground robots. A drone uses Bluetooth detection, C02 sensors, and thermal imaging to locate people from above. A complementary ground vehicle controlled by radio frequency helps conduct searches in tight, hard-to-reach places.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the event of an earthquake or explosion, they can detect where people are,\u201d Hambright said. \u201cIt would provide a heatmap to the rescuers to show where they were able to ping those signals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debt collectors<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The prize for data visualization went to Team 5: Data Visualization \u2013 US Debt Graph<\/a>. The group created a way to visualize the national debt using CSS, HTML and JavaScript. Their graph shows a debt predictor and even drills down to show how much each U.S. president has contributed to the debt.<\/p>\n