Hackathon To Develop New Skills for Yandex’s Virtual Assistant Concludes at ITMO

Alice is an intelligent virtual assistant developed by Yandex. It can recognize and interpret human speech, maintain a dialogue for an extended period of time, respond to user questions, and even handle some practical tasks using pre-programmed “skills.” Alice is integrated into smartphones, tablets, computers, and cars. 

The hackathon’s goal was to develop new skills for Alice. These skills were intended to make life easier for ITMO students. The teams mainly consisted of Bachelor’s students (44%), but they also included school (13%) and Master’s students (16%). In total, more than 250 people from all across Russia took part in the hackathon. 

Participants included experts in various fields: robotics, design, software development, etc. Specialists had a month to create a skill that would be evaluated by the contest’s jury based on three criteria: originality, technical implementation, and usefulness. Only 22 teams made it to the finals, with ITMO students taking the top three spots.

The Cool Guys team became the winners with their skill, which enables Alice to help students with exam preparation. It can read lecture notes, inform students about the office hours of their teachers, remind them about the time and date of their exams, and even assign random questions as a test.

The team behind this skill consists of ITMO students Elizaveta Suremkina, Maxim Laptev, Nikita Mikhin, Eva Arakchieva, and Danila Belogaev. 

You can try this skill out via this link.

The DV team finished second with a skill called Bars: the ITMO Megaadapter. It helps new students adapt to the environment when they arrive at ITMO by teaching them about the different campuses, the university’s history, how ITMO’s coworking spaces work, etc. As a bonus,the skill recognizes and uses many of ITMO University’s signature colloquialisms and slang terms.

The team behind this skill consists of ITMO students Valery Kovalev, Egor Chernov, Ivan Kozlov, Anastasia Sypacheva, and Valeria Byzova.

You can try this skill out via this link.

The third place went to the team Alice’s Brother with the skill called After Classes. The team’s main goal was to make the university more friendly towards first-year students. The skill helps them connect by taking the initiative in conversations and suggesting activities, games, and even discussion topics.

The team behind this skill consists of ITMO students Pavel Kalinin, Valentin Markovsky, Yegor Slinko, and Zhanna Antokhina.

You can try this skill out via this link.

Another awesome entry belongs to the CodeX team from the Irkutsk Oblast. It is called Fascinating Lecture, and is a kind of a quiz which takes its users on a journey by asking them questions about the culture and history of different places. This skill allows students to have a great time while competing with one another and learning new things. And if the game ever starts to get boring, users can talk about absolutely anything with Aurora Historia, a special character that is part of this skill.

The team behind this skill consists of Sergei Yenike, Dmitry Prodeus, Zakhar Parfenov, Nikita Ryabtsev, and Alexander Kismeryoshkin. CodeX took the fourth place in the competition.

You can try this skill out via this link.

The winners were awarded with several Yandex.Station smart speakers and other gifts. Several of the skills are going to be integrated into ITMO’s ISU system. Meanwhile, the university’s students can already try these skills out in testing mode.

Written by Ekaterina Vasilyeva, PR Office of ITMO’s Higher School of Digital Culture