The 25th Annual PDP Gala was held
on Friday 13th of May
9:00 to 17:00 (UTC+2)
For 25 years, PdP has brought business, design, and engineering students together to tackle industry challenges and develop state of the art solutions to real problems. At the Product Design Gala, you’ll witness and experience these awesome products. In addition to this being the 25th anniversary, the course also celebrates the completion of the 300th project.
The nine student teams from Aalto University and several partner universities have been working hard for the whole year to complete their design challenges given by industrial companies and other collaborating parties. In this public event, you will have a chance to hear about the teams’ accomplishments and processes and get familiar with the people themselves and their unique prototypes. This year the teams are sponsored by such companies as SAAB, Konecranes and Ensto. In addition, the Aalto teams have been collaborating with students from universities in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
Could not attend?
A video stream of each team’s presentation and live demo has been recorded and can be watched at the top of this page.
2022 PDP Projects
Team Cleandet
Without technological devices, people are rarely able to determine if they washed their hands effectively. We have created a prototype that is a reliable and accurate hand contamination detector that helps people quickly determine how well an individual has washed their hands. To realize this prototype, we use the visible light spectrum that fluoresces the contamination, and this fluorescence is filtered from the background light with a bandpass filter that a camera ends up picking up.
We have sectioned the prototype into bigger themes; hardware, software and casing. In these themes we have further made gates that need to be achieved in order to go to the next step. We iterate through this process until we hit our customer’s needs, aka our goals.
Team Elwood
Soul-stirring boating. Imagine feeling the warm sun and a light breeze on your face on a summer evening. Imagine hearing only the birds in the sky and the sound of the waves. That’s the reality with an Elwood boat.
Meet Elwood – a modern and sustainable electric boat. Handcrafted from Finnish wood and state-of-the-art technology, Elwood makes boat rides an unforgettable experience. Instead of a traditional combustion engine and hydraulic steering system, the boat moves quietly with an electric motor, and a unique electrical steering system developed by our team.
Join us and let Elwood take you on a soul-stirring adventure!
Team Ensto
The use of good underground cable connectors plays a key role in building reliable electricity distribution networks. These cable connectors are often installed in challenging conditions and need to have a long lifetime and a low environmental impact. Our team has found a radical new approach to making underground cable connectors that changes the now commonly use leaded brass to a lead-free alternative, while also greatly reducing the total amount of brass used. We believe this new design can save costs, while also saving the environment! Join us at the PDP Gala to see the next generation of cable connectors.
Team Foamheads
A new sustainable cellulose-based material Foamwood was created at Aalto University in order to replace harmful plastic foams. Our challenge was to upscale Foamwood production and find the best applications for this new material with superior properties. Come to visit our booth and we will show you how we tackled our challenge. You can get a taste of this material and a chance to participate in the development work in a playful way. Be there or be square!
Team KoneQueens
What is that on the ceiling? Is that a bird, is that a drone? Wait, it’s a crane! How do you locate the accurate position of a crane in a factory to bring it to exactly where it is required?
The KoneQueens team are assisting Konecranes to develop a technology that can precisely tackle this problem. By using a revolutionary frame of reference, KoneQueens technology can zero in to the precise crane position.
KoneQueens are lifting crane technology to the next level.
Added attraction: We will be assisting Konecranes navigate through indoor spaces at the PdP gala.
Don’t miss out on witnessing the start of a revolution!
Team Lifa-Air
Severe COVID wave has become history and the post-covid age is coming. Are you still afraid of taking off your masks? Simultaneously, fresh air is so attractive. Are you looking forward to alternative ways to keep both safe and comfortable?
Purifair, who develops next generation of personal purifier, is here with innovative ways to provide uncontaminated air. Whether you are in a crowded area, or in your productive offices. Why not get freshed up to by joining us?
Team Noctus
With so many drones swarming in the airspace, whatever security you thought you had is gone. While most people do not yet associate drones with security risks, they pose an array of threats, and reports of drone-related accidents and near-misses are on the rise.
Meet Noctus! A comprehensive system that detects, identifies and intercepts drones. The Noctus offers a toolkit that makes it possible to combine sensors to a package that fits users needs. The toolkit features affordable and versatile sensors such as cameras utilizing image recognizing AI. By combining sensor posts, resilient multi-layered surveillance zones can be created to protect targets of varying sizes from small drones.
Team Crosshair Splitter
When hunting, a small aiming error can be magnified, leading to a deviation from the target. Yet, while holding the guns with a subtle shaking from hands, the shooters occasionally miss the shooting timing. If you were a hunter, would you like to have a riffle which can guide you when shooting?
Our team developed the next-generation digital rifle for you. It will help you increase your first shot probability with our digital system. We adhere to providing you with a better shooting experience by technical means.
Team Chicks with Sticks
Finland has won the Olympic gold medal in hockey this winter! Such a great leap forward! But it can’t be forgotten that one fierce competition in 2006 in Turin winter Olympic, where Finland lost the game because of a hockey stick breakage at the wrong time.
The solution from the Chicks with Sticks team is to explore the hockey stick defects, which is helpful to avoid hockey stick breakage. The Chicks with Sticks team has built two machines to check the properties of hockey sticks. One is the 3-point bending machine, which helps to measure the stiffness of the hockey stick. Another one is the tap testing machine to detect the defects inside the hockey stick. The whole package can be a suitable tool for preventing hockey stick breakage during the game.
What is PDP
PDP is a course where students from all Aalto schools come together in multidisciplinary teams to solve real life challenges that are provided by industry partners. The course has a strong international presence with partner universities from all around the world. During the 9-month journey all teams have a budget of 10 000 euros that can be freely used for the realization of their ideas. The teams take the challenge provided by the industrial partner from being an idea all the way to a proof-of-concept prototype.
Months
Budget
Alumni
PDP has numerous benefits that are unique to it and everyone’s experience of the course is unique. Students learn how to work with people from different fields as well as test their skills on a real-world problem. It can be thought of as the closest one can get to working life while still being in the safety of the university. During the years approximately 3000 students have taken PDP and many rate the course as the best they ever took. For more information about the course, click here.