Mouser is sponsoring the 2018 Mood Reader Hackathon Challenge in the Contamination Lab & Innovation Kitchen (CLIK) at Politecnico di Torino. CLIK is designed to nurture and incubate new projects and innovative ideas by students at the prestigious Italian engineering facility.

This is the second year that the company has backed the CLIK design competition, which began March 12 with over 30 teams registering for the hackathon. A panel of industry and academic experts have selected the top 10 teams competing in the final challenge. Previous challenges focused on voice recognition and the Alexa API and building on the recognition theme. The first challenge of 2018 will focus on mood recognition, including image sensing and image processing technology to create an innovative solution.

Commented Massimo Violante, associate professor responsible for the creation of CLIK, "Now in its second year, the CLIK challenge is getting real traction with more teams and organisations becoming involved. We hope not only to encourage and nurture innovation, but also that all the participants have fun and find the challenges interesting and stimulating."

Added Mark Patrick, supplier and technical marketing manager, EMEA, Mouser: "CLIK is a perfect example of how we at Mouser work in partnership with academia and the innovation community to develop new ideas. Mouser is all about supporting design engineers and making sure that they can access the absolute latest, leading-edge technology so they can come up with products that will change the world we live in for the better."