by Trevor Hass
Sports Reporter
Lane Scherber, Alex Oelke and Aljosa Cucak watched as the third- and-second-place winners of the Minne-Hack competition were announced.
They casually joked that first place was all that was left, so they must have won the whole competition. When their names were announced, Oelke said they were truly in disbelief.
“We didn’t see it coming at all,” Oelke, 19, said, “so we were really ecstatic and caught off guard.”
Lane Scherber looks at Alex Oelke’s laptop as they learn how to use the Muse software development kit. They also made a tower of pop cans.
Scherber is from Rogers and Oelke is from Otsego, and the duo teamed up with Scherber’s colleague, Cucak, to take home first prize at the University of Minnesota’s annual event. They beat out close to 250 other students from 35 schools, winning the competition by modifying the video game “Flappy Bird” so someone with a degenerative disease, such as ALS, could play.
They used a Muse headband, which measures brainwaves, to set up the game so whenever someone blinked it would cause a simulated tap on the screen. That way people who couldn’t use their hands could still play.
“It wasn’t about the raw skill you brought to the table, but what you made out of the ideas,” Scherber, 19, said.
The set up of the event was essentially a computer science major’s paradise. The people who ran the competition provided snacks, equipment and a small sleeping area that Oelke and Scherber didn’t take advantage of until morning.
The event started at 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 and ran for 24 hours. Oelke said they were essentially locked in the building that whole time. They had to make their idea relate to accessibility, sustainability, automation or health care, and they eventually chose accessibility.
They were messing around, and jokingly proposed the idea of playing Flappy Bird. Later on, they went back to the idea and realized it was so crazy it just might work.
“It was just a collaboration,” Oelke said. “We were all standing around. A lot of teams planned out exactly what they were going to do, but we just went in with kind of an open mind.”
Aljosa Cucak (second from left), Lane Scherber (middle) and Alex Oelke (second from right) accept their first-place award at the Minne-Hack competition.
Once they fleshed out their idea, they worked on their presentation, creating a video and slide show to showcase their work. The judges were impressed, and Oelke, Scherber and Cucak all won a tablet, either a drone or 3-D printer and a raspberry pie.
Many other teams had done the competition for years, but it was the triumphant trio’s first time participating. No one saw a win from the newbies coming – not even the newbies themselves.
“Part of the reason we won was because we didn’t take it too seriously,” Scherber said. “We were relaxed.”