The Spark Challenge is a campus-wide, corporate-sponsored design competition, hosted by Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in partnership with the ECE Student Society (ECESS). The event is held twice a year, at the end of the Fall and Spring semesters. The Spark Challenge is open to all undergraduate students in any discipline at Purdue University, and can be an individual entry or a team of up to four members.  It allows students to present their projects in one of two ways: demonstration only or demonstration and competition in the challenge which is judged by ECE faculty and corporate sponsors.

For the Fall 2021 event, more than three dozen teams showcased the projects they had been working on all semester.

First Place

The first-place team was Team Haptic Piano Tutor (HPT), which developed a product that aims to accelerate the learning process for piano using haptic feedback. HTP helps new pianists by guiding each finger to the correct note using vibration on the fingers and wrists.

Haptic Piano Tutor team members include: Phillip Archuleta, Elijah Berscheid, Carrie Li, and Soham Ray.

Second Place

Coming in second place was Team MarioKart. Because of their love for the video game, team members built a Remote-Control (RC) system similar to MarioKart. The racing system includes cars, controllers, and a central tower. The microcontrollers communicate through ESPNOW, and NFC tags are used as the race track.

 Mario Kart team members include: Jorge Apolo, Jake Doan, Andre Hatushikano, and Da Yeon Nam.

Third Place

Team Take Off finished in third place at SPARK with its modular ground-to-air logistic solution that integrates an autonomous vehicle and a drone to improve autonomous food delivery systems.

Take Off team members include: Scott Fang, Laula Huang, Kyle Li, and Chin Yang.

The teams won prizes of $2,000, $1,600, and $1,200 respectively.

People's Choice

Team Purdue Pharma won the People’s Choice Award for its pill-dispensing system targeted for individuals in assisted living. The system has administrative functionalities for the caretaker and focuses on accessibility.

Purdue Pharma team members include: Tessca Almeida, Brian Colananni, Andrew LaPrade, and Daniel Romans. The team won $400.

In addition to support from Purdue ECE, ECESS received support from the following corporate sponsors: Boeing, Cadence, Eastman, JLG Industries, General Motors, L3 Harris, Qualcomm, and John Deere.