Entrepreneurship / Innovation

The "Sûr’TCL" and "Kéo" projects winners of the Alstom-Innovation Factory challenge

On The March 2, 2018

The Université de Lyon, through the Factory of Innovation scheme and Alstom, has completed its second multidisciplinary student challenge. This year, the theme of the event was "safety on public rail transport for passengers and staff". Two prizes were awarded to teams made up of students from several institutions at the Université de Lyon.

The second year of this creative challenge brought together around thirty students from several institutions at the Université de Lyon over a day and a half. Helped by the Factory of Innovation team and Alstom employees, the students learned to generate, develop, model and pitch new ideas to a professional jury.

The teams aimed to find solutions to improve safety on public rail transport for passengers and staff. Students had to work in teams to look at the safety of either "staff" or "passengers".

34 students from INSA Lyon, the Université Lumière Lyon 2, the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, the Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne and the Martinière Diderot high school took part in the challenge.

The challenge is an enriching experience for the students who work in multidisciplinary groups, as they are confronted with new approaches and points of view, as well as specific types of activities aiming to boost their creativity. It also enables them to work in close collaboration with professionals from Alstom in an innovative and stimulating work environment, at the heart of the company.

The prize for the "best project" on the theme of staff safety was awarded to the "Kéo" project, which has developed an application aiming to help and strengthen relationships between operating company staff and passengers. The aim is to promote the role of ticket inspectors in order to change perceptions and the relationships between staff and passengers.

The prize for the "best project" on the theme of passenger safety was awarded to the "Sûr’TCL" project, which aims to make passengers agents of their own safety. The concept revolves around an application that activates an alert in the event of incidents or aggression, which is sent in real-time to the control center.

Both teams won 2,500 euros each. One of the two projects will go on to be developed by Alstom with a multidisciplinary team of students as part of an internship covering four to five months.