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02. April 2025
Bostons Cutting Edge: Pioneering Smart City Solutions Unveiled At Record-Breaking Hackathon
The Metal Ops: Smart City Hackathon, a cutting-edge hackathon designed to test innovative smart city tools, recently concluded its successful three-day event in downtown Boston. Hosted by AI startup Code Metal, the event brought together 14 teams comprising participants from esteemed institutions such as Harvard University, the University of Boston, and the Department of Defense.
The brainchild of Code Metal’s CEO, Peter Morales, the hackathon aimed to challenge teams to develop novel solutions that leveraged urban infrastructure for United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) missions. The event’s primary objective was to foster collaboration between tech enthusiasts, researchers, and government stakeholders to create intelligent, data-driven systems that could improve urban resilience and modernization.
The winning team, Team Medarus, emerged victorious with their Lantern project, a pioneering initiative that utilized passive sensor nodes hidden in everyday objects and existing city infrastructure to track vehicles for surveillance purposes. The sensors, capable of collecting vehicle data such as tire pressure signals, formed a low-power mesh network that relayed information back to a command center, enabling near-continuous monitoring even in traditionally unmonitored areas.
The Lantern project has significant potential use cases for government, defense, and municipal stakeholders, who could benefit from the system’s ability to monitor and analyze vehicle data in real-time. The project’s success was attributed to Team Medarus’ meticulous approach, which involved developing a hardware solution, deploying sensors, and testing it in a real-world environment.
Team Medarus consisted of David Neary, an RF/Cyber research and development program manager; Anton Njavro, a computer science student at Boston University; Ryan Nguyen, a statistics student at Harvard; and Djordje Ivanovic, a computer science student at Harvard. Their collaboration exemplified the spirit of innovation and teamwork that defined the hackathon.
Other notable teams, including Team C:4 from MIT, secured second place with Project Code Three, a system designed to rapidly process and analyze bodycam footage for real-time decision-making. Third place was awarded to a team from the Department of Defense’s Special Forces for their project, Unsanitized Inputs, which proposed novel data security measures for urban networks.
The success of this year’s hackathon has sparked anticipation among Code Metal officials, who anticipate future collaborations to further integrate smart city technologies into national security strategies. Morales highlighted the importance of addressing the increasingly sophisticated nature of AI attacks on urban systems, stating that “AI can attempt millions of different attacks on a system, rapidly trying every known exploit and even discovering new ones.” This changes the game, and the need for systems that can withstand active, intelligent adversaries becomes more pressing.
Security hardening will become a much more dynamic, ongoing process, with AI playing both the attacker and defender in that ecosystem. The hackathon’s success serves as a testament to the power of collaboration between tech experts, researchers, and government stakeholders in creating innovative solutions that can enhance urban resilience and national security.
As cities continue to evolve and face new challenges, the intersection of AI, smart cities, and national security will become increasingly crucial. The Metal Ops: Smart City Hackathon serves as a beacon of innovation, inspiring collaborations that can lead to real-world applications and tangible benefits for citizens. With the future of urban resilience and modernization hanging in the balance, the hackathon’s success is a reassuring reminder of the potential for technology to enhance our lives and communities.
The hackathon’s organizers have set their sights on fostering continued collaboration between tech enthusiasts, researchers, and government stakeholders to create intelligent, data-driven systems that can improve urban resilience and national security. As the field of smart cities continues to advance, it is essential to recognize the significance of events like the Metal Ops: Smart City Hackathon in shaping the future of our cities and our world.
In a rapidly changing landscape, where AI attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the need for innovative solutions that can withstand active, intelligent adversaries has never been more pressing. The hackathon’s success serves as a testament to the power of collaboration and innovation in addressing these challenges.
The Metal Ops: Smart City Hackathon has proven that, with the right combination of innovation, collaboration, and expertise, we can create intelligent systems that can enhance our lives and communities. As we look to the future, it is crucial to continue supporting initiatives like this hackathon, which have the potential to shape the course of urban resilience and national security.
The intersection of AI, smart cities, and national security will play an increasingly critical role in addressing complex challenges facing our world. The Metal Ops: Smart City Hackathon has demonstrated the power of innovation and collaboration in creating intelligent systems that can improve urban resilience and national security, inspiring continued collaborations between tech enthusiasts, researchers, and government stakeholders to drive positive change.