It’s been a good year for Aussie ingenuity if the winners of the Australian’s Innovation Challenge are any indication. Taking out top gong was Jeremy Woodhill with his Smart GPO, an intelligent power point that can save households up to $5 a week with no effort whatsoever.
The Smart GPOs are small, remote controlled switches embedded in a power point, which intelligently switch off when you leave home, without turning off any essential power supplies. Given how much electricity prices are set to rise in the near future, let’s hope to see this at a retail level in the very near future.
Other winners of the challenge include:
• Mark Kendall for his Nanopatches for Improved Vaccines
• Marcela Bilek for Biological Cloaking
• Gary Kong for Digital Diagnostics – The Remote Microscope Network
• David Miljak for Advanced sensor system for large scale-ore sorting
• Andrew Verden for NICTA’s Indigo Solver
• Joe Wolfe for The Physclips Platform: A new way to learn Physics
• Rick Shine for Toad vs Toad exploitation of the cane toad’s toxic chemicals
Congrats to the winners, who all make my daily writing about gadgets seem insignificant. You guys are awesome.