Sonos Partners With Real Industry for University Challenges to Design Smart Speaker Experiences That Improve the Moments in Our Daily Lives

BOSTON, Nov. 13, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Sonos, the inventor of multi-room wireless Home Sound System with a mission to help the world listen better by giving people access to the content they love and allowing them to control it however they want, has partnered with Real Industry for its second annual Sonos Challenge. During the challenge, students worked together to answer the following question: How do we design or build an experience that delivers the right sound, at the right moment, into people's lives? Participating students used Sonos hardware and software to explore this prompt, build something, and communicate the engineering and business value behind their accomplishments.

"Today's university students are the future leaders of industry," says Jay LeBoeuf, Founder and Executive Director of Real Industry. "By partnering with Sonos and Boston-area universities, we were able to give students unprecedented access to real-world challenges, technologies, and career opportunities!"

On October 4th, the program kicked off at the Sonos Boston office, with over 180 students having registered from Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College, Tufts University, Wellesley College, Northeastern University, Berklee College of Music, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Clark University, and more.

"When Real Industry brought the Sonos Challenge to Tufts in 2017, we had over 100 students participate from a variety of disciplines from engineering to music to experience design. Having an opportunity to see how the skills they've developed in the classroom could connect to careers and products they love brought a new level of practicality to our research, projects and classroom discussions," said Bradford Swanson, Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. "The students who made connections at those events with leaders at Sonos and mentors from other parts of the industry have had a serious leg up in finding internships and jobs in these fields, and will hopefully continue on to share in mentoring students as their careers get established. It's an initiative that will keep on giving back to the Tufts community in the years to come through these mentoring relationships."

A team of 3 Tufts University students won the Boston Sonos Challenge. Chris Markus, Electrical Engineering '20, Katie Elliott, EE '20, and Allie Lam, Applied Math/Music Technology '20, created OurSound, a group listening solution. Their project was an integrated, collaborative music recommendation solution, built upon the Spotify and Sonos APIs. The app allows groups of listeners to enjoy a music playlist creating based on their shared listening preferences, easily controlled by intuitive controls, on a Sonos system.

The University of Washington Sonos Challenge launched on October 9th. Hosted by University of Washington's Department of Electrical Engineering, engineering and design students participated for the second year in a row.

An interdisciplinary team of 5 students won this year's challenge, including Xu Yan, Computer Science '19, Zoe Zou, Master in Science and Technology Innovation '19, Hal Zhang, Electrical Engineering, Michael Radenbaugh, Electrical Engineering, and Padraic Casserly, Technology Innovation and Bio-Chemistry.

With their project, Feel.io, users discover music by singing and humming tunes they would like to hear into an embedded microphone. Exact and similar sounding songs are played back through Sonos speakers. At the same time, Feel.io identifies songs with a similar vibe or in the same genre and play them back to you through your Sonos speaker. The Feel.io aims for their innovation to be the best way to celebrate your current mood, and discover and explore music.

"Last year, over 100 University of Washington students, with different and complementary levels of skill in digital signal processing, computer science, and machine learning, got together and shared a fine set of experiences. These students were able to apply the concepts that they learned in usual classroom and lab instruction. It was really nice to watch them experience the importance of their creativity in their work. Moreover, they were also able to bring some exciting new concepts back as future research and class projects," said Professor Les Atlas, Signal Processing and Machine Learning Researcher at the University of Washington.

"I enjoyed the Real Industry and Sonos events last year in Boston and Seattle. For me, the fact that the students were exposed to a broad cross section of the development process, including ideation, product management, and design, as well as the actual coding, was particularly appealing. I'm excited to see what students do this year with our open developer platform," said Matt Welch, Product Manager at Sonos.

Smart speakers are transforming how we enjoy music, access information, and interact with our homes. The Sonos Challenge empowers university students to get experience with technology and innovation in an industry they're passionate about, all while receiving mentorship from professionals in the field. This partnership between Real Industry and Sonos provides students with opportunities they would not have otherwise accessed.

ABOUT SONOS
Sonos is the leading multi-room wireless smart home sound system. As the inventor of multi-room wireless home audio, Sonos innovation helps the world listen better by giving people access to the content they love and allowing them to control it however they choose. Known for delivering an unparalleled music listening experience, thoughtful home design aesthetic, simplicity of use and an open platform, Sonos makes the breadth of sonic content available to anyone. Sonos is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. Learn more at http://www.sonos.com.

http://www.sonos.com/ | @sonos | pr(at)sonos.com |

ABOUT REAL INDUSTRY
Real Industry is an educational non-profit with the mission to educate, inspire, and empower university students to thrive in the arts and technology industry. We create hands-on programs where students work with industry mentors to tackle real-world problems. Students are exposed to new career paths, develop new skills, and rapidly expand their professional networks.

http://www.realindustry.org | @Real_Industry | info(at)realindustry.org

SOURCE Real Industry