HOUSTON – Virtual reality, augmented reality, and then there’s aerial videography -- or drones.
Students at camp are learning all about the latest in technology.
“You can pretty much see everything from this height,” says John Liu who is wearing a VR headset connected to an in-flight drone.
“It’s like flying but you’re still on the ground,” says Lilac Nolan after experiencing the same headset.
Nolan and Liu are two of about 30 students going through the inaugural Hackathon Camp at Houston Baptist University.
The five-day course is designed for students who share a common trait.
“Interest. You know interest in new technologies, interest in, if they’d ever heard of entrepreneurship or free enterprise or those type of things,” Michael Player said.
Player developed the camp as a part of the campus’s McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise. In addition to exposing these students to drones, virtual reality and augmented reality technologies the camp also helped students develop an idea.
“It’s called a Screwed. We have a modular water bottle which you can take apart and join at different parts with threading,” Player said.
“We got to make a 3D model of our product which was awesome, seeing our idea come to life,” Nolan said.
“We have the lid, the bottle opening, the main body piece, the bottom. We also have a separator than can either separate two different parts so you can carry two different liquids and also a filter so that you can prevent ice, so that if you put ice in it you can prevent the ice from hitting you in the face or you can also put fruits in there to extract the flavor out of it,” describes Liu while showing off a prototype.
Props go to their other group mate, Axel, for the design and printing of the product, and props to the camp for making it possible.
“These are the entrepreneurs, these are the owners of tomorrow that have that mindset. Let them expand their mind and see what they come up with,” Player said.
The camp culminates Friday with a trip to NASA and special behind-the-scenes tour.
Player plans to run the camp again next year.
