Year after year, Pennsylvania ranks low with regard to infrastructure, especially when it comes to its bridges. A recent report says about one in four of the state’s 22,000-plus bridges are structurally deficient. Upon learning about the problem, a group of Penn students put their heads together to develop Viewpoint, a startup to help tackle the issue.

The idea behind Viewpoint, which won the inaugural Comcast-Pennovation Challenge in the spring, is a technology that more efficiently and effectively collects and monitors the structural stability of railway and roadway bridges.

The hope, explains Kevin Martin, an Integrated Product Design (IPD) master’s student, is that Viewpoint “creates something that’s more preventative and less reactionary.”

Martin and Viewpoint’s other team members, including Chelsea Meyers, Grace Moore, Jono Sanders, and Evan Oskierko-Jeznacki, are working to transform an already existing application and intersect it with Comcast’s new machineQ technology—an Internet of Things service that connects devices, systems, and services. (Think smart home or smart city.)

“The sensors on the bridge will detect how the bridge is doing structurally, and then send the information back to the appropriate people, whether that be a civil engineering firm, the city, or on the federal level,” says Martin. “The machineQ technology allows the sensors to be less expensive, and enables a more effective communication of the data, while also using very low power.”

This is exactly the type of creative idea Comcast was looking for when it crafted the Comcast-Pennovation Challenge with the Pennovation Center and Penn Center for Innovation last fall. The hope was that participating entrepreneurs would generate innovative solutions to expand machineQ, and that’s precisely what Viewpoint does.

“Viewpoint is an exemplary use case for our new low-power, long-range IoT network,” says Bryan Witkowski, machineQ’s head of product. “We are excited to help the team grow their idea into real-world pilots and to become a commercial product. And just being out in the market talking to city officials and civil engineers, everyone is hungry for IoT solutions that address our aging infrastructure.”

Witkowski, who says Comcast plans to sponsor another Challenge with Penn next year, adds that working with the University’s “enthusiastic” students “inspires us to do better.”

“We meet with companies globally every day to look for new IoT solutions,” Witkowski says. “To see this idea grow from a group of graduate students at Penn, it really demonstrates the intellectual capability and engineering skills of Penn faculty and students. Partnering with Penn will always continue to pay dividends.”

The Challenge awarded the Viewpoint team $3,000, free workspace in the Pennovation Center for six months, and automatic acceptance into Penn’s I-Corps, an on-campus accelerator program supported by the National Science Foundation, which begins in November.

In addition, Viewpoint is receiving continued guidance from both Penn and Comcast, as well as Drexel University researchers and the city, to further develop the idea, and ultimately the product.

“It’s been such an incredible opportunity,” says Martin. “Being able to work with Comcast, a large national company, has been such a cool experience, and the IPD program is great because it integrates business, engineering, and design all in one, which is perfect for entrepreneurs. This is something I can see myself doing going forward, and the Comcast-Pennovation Challenge and Viewpoint has given me the potential to give it a try.”