Soul Sailor

Our project Soul Sailor supports refugees dealing with mental illnesses like PTSD or depression by providing psychological care and eliminating factors out of their surroundings which contribute to their issues. To do so we provide our user with the AI and data driven digital companion Mayu who interacts with the user via speech and helps the user to express his/her experiences and come to Mayu with his/her worries. Furthermore, we establish the connection between fled relatives who have been separated with our novel approach of an event based network. But how did we get the idea? Tushaar was travelling in the train from Munich to Mannheim and started speaking with his seat neighbour, who turned out to be a refugee travelling to his brother. He had fled from Aleppo and started speaking about how he travelled 3000 km alone as a 15-year-old. He had lost his sister during his journey and had travelled through 10 countries. His story was truly heart-braking. Just before getting down in Stuttgart the refugee thanked Tushaar because this was the first time he was able talk to somebody what all he has been through. And this inspired us to get together and give refugees the opportunity to deal with their experience and the resulting psychological trauma. This video elaborates upon this: https://youtu.be/AngGxwR54-c . Our Website https://soulsailor.tech

We are a team of three students (B.Sc. Information Systems) and Microsoft Student Partners studying at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. Stefan Zitzlsperger, Tushaar Bhatt, Jakob von der Haar. As Microsoft’s Vision is to empower everybody we felt that the Imagine Cup is a good opportunity to become a part of this vision. With Soul Sailor we want to help the fled overcome psychological illnesses and reconnect them with their family they might have lost during their flight. This is our approach to empower them to take back control of their life, because we want to solve a current problem with a long-term solution. „With soul sailor we are aiming to solve a current problem with a long-term solution. We are aware of the responsibility we hold when approaching the human mind with artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, we are convinced that we must own this responsibility to make a positive impact and help people in need! ”- Tushaar Bhatt, Team Soul Sailor #StudentHack #CommunityRocks