<p>So I just found a mentor who I met up with today. He is a computer science professor, and he knows about my interests, so he suggested 2 projects. One was where I follow the way this guy built a remote control car from a raspberry pi, and some other stuff,and build one myself, but he says I could find a way to make it more efficient, or make it self driving or something like that. Maybe I could create instructions, and make a easy manual for people just starting off in computer science such as high school students or undergrad students. His other project idea was for me to use a rig of kinect sensors to be able to track an object such as my finger, and create an x,y,z coordinate plane with the finger having coordinates wherever it is. Both of them seem really interesting to me, and I am doing research in both of them, but would either be something that I could enter in a research competition such as ISEF or Siemens? If not, what would be a possible idea?</p>
<p>IIRC, Siemens doesn’t let you enter any work you did not do yourself, so the first project is pretty much out (though I’m not sure about ISEF, since I haven’t looked at the rules yet). Also, the second project honestly does not seem that impressive; it has to be sort of marketed to be almost a breakthrough for you to do well in these kinds of competitions. I would personally find it hard to “market” an x-y-z plane, but if you think you could find some very practical uses for it in the modern world, then you could definitely try. </p>
<p>@capitalamerica </p>
<p>Well I am not just going to enter exactly what he did. I will make improvements on it, such as it being able to drive itself. Almost every discovery in science and technology was a improvement on a previous discovery. Google’s self driving car was an improvement on a normal car. </p>
<p>I’m not talking about it being a great discovery. I’m talking about it in terms of competition. That means that you’ll only be able to enter the improvements that you did yourself; any work that was done by your mentor in building the actual car controlled by the Raspberry Pi will just have to be cited (but of course you will have known that). I overstepped what I meant when I said “the first project is pretty much out”; while it is dependent on your mentor’s work, the project itself is not completely out as an option for you.</p>
<p>The concept of marketing your research still stands, though. A lot of the other research that people submit, especially when bio-related, can be connected to therapeutics, advances in theories, etc. It’s going to be a bit harder for you since you’re doing computer science, so you should try to be innovative in what you make to really impress whoever looks at your future work.</p>