Latin students and chess players Jack Hollingsworth ’23 and Teddy Warner ’23 were intrigued when they heard the news of the cheating scandal that recently rocked the chess world. A fast-rising, 19-year-old American Grandmaster was accused of using assistance to win in-person games. Experts surmised that a device was in his shoe, transmitting signals to him for each play. How, Jack and Teddy pondered, would one do this? “We saw this as an opportunity to replicate it and share [our project] online,” said Jack.

 

Using the Fab Lab’s equipment and their knowledge from other engineering projects, Jack and Teddy developed a Von Neumann Probe, an AVR-based Bluetooth-telegraphing shoe insole, to test the feasibility of such an aid. “When we tested it, I played against a much higher-ranked player than me—and I beat them using the device,” said Teddy. While there is no solid evidence of the cheating allegation, “our device shows that it is definitely possible to create a device that you could use to cheat over the board,” said Teddy. (Over the board in chess is an in-person game using a physical board as opposed to a digital game.) Jack added, “Out of all the similar projects shared online, ours is definitely the most advanced.”

 

The inside of Jack and Teddy's insole device

 

Additionally, Jack and Teddy’s work is all open-source, meaning that every detail is shared with other creators and can be replicated by others around the world. As Teddy said, “it’s not just a project that we find cool. People can recreate this for themselves and see how devices like this can actually harm the world of chess and…remove some certainty from over the board games that have been traditionally very difficult to cheat in.”

 

Tom Dubick, Latin’s Director of Innovation and Design, said, “This project was born because of the curiosity of two Latin students who took the technical challenges upon themselves. Latin’s Fab Lab provided the means; Jack and Teddy did the work. This is a great example of our students as technology creators, not just consumers.”