The Synergy Team Joins Google and Amazon in Challenging Student Programmers at SB Hacks
Employees from the Synergy team at Arthrex California Technology (ACT) sponsored and participated in the 4th annual SB Hacks, a 36-hour career and science fair hybrid event organized by the University of California at Santa Barbara. SB Hacks brings creative programming students from around the country together to collaborate and compete on projects that are evaluated by industry professionals.
The Arthrex Synergy team joined tech companies like Google, Amazon, LogMeIn, AppFolio and Lockheed Martin in presenting unique challenges to the programmers. 
Arthrex employees told the students about the Synergy™ product line and challenged teams of programmers to create the “Best Touchless Gesture User Interface.” Five teams submitted projects for the challenge and competed for the $500 first-place prize. The teams used augmented reality (AR) with motion sensors, machine learning and gesture recognition for their projects.
The winning team was a group of UCLA students who used an Oculus (virtual reality headset) and a Leap Motion Sensor to create an AR environment that allowed them to manipulate an object in virtual space.
"This allows you to see your hands in the virtual space interacting with the pure virtual object," explained Noah Daniels, director of software engineering. "An interesting use case for us could be a virtual ArthroBox™ triangulation training tool that could allow surgeons to use a variety of tools in a virtualized environment."
Noah shared, “Not only were the technical results of the event spectacular, we also had several students express interest in summer internships as well as a few full-time positions.”
