Sokrates

Inspiration

"I saw it happening everywhere in varsity: a generation of students relying on AI without any real knowledge of the topics they were studying. The cycle was always the same—waste time, wait until the final deadline, and then use an LLM to submit something they didn’t actually write or understand. The deep learning that used to exist is disappearing. I knew I had to do something to change the system, even if only in a small way. That is why I developed SOKRATES AI. By utilizing the Socratic method of teaching through questioning, SOKRATES AI challenges students to think for themselves rather than just copying and pasting. It’s time to bring back active learning."

What it does

SOKRATES is an interactive learning platform that combines physical yoga pose detection with a Socratic AI philosophy chatbot. Before unlocking the dialogue, users must ground themselves in the present moment by holding a yoga pose — bridging physical awareness with intellectual exploration.

🧘 Yoga Pose Challenge — Real-time pose detection via webcam using MediaPipe. Hold the target pose at ≥80% accuracy for 10 seconds to unlock the AI dialogue.

🤖 Sokrates AI Chatbot — A philosophy-driven AI that engages users in Socratic dialogue, embedded from Hugging Face Spaces.

🌀 Cognitive Friction Layer — Scroll velocity detection that gently reminds users to slow down and read with intention.

🎯 6 Yoga Poses — warrior2, tree, plank, downdog, goddess, namaskar

📊 93.5% Model Accuracy — Random Forest classifier trained on 1,041 landmark samples.

How we built it

Frontend

React 18

CSS3 (custom animations, scroll detection)

ML Pipeline

Python 3.12

MediaPipe 0.10.13

scikit-learn (Random Forest)

OpenCV

NumPy

Deployment

Vercel app

Hugging Face Spaces (Gradio)

Challenges we ran into

It was very challenging to reduce lag between the live webcam feed and the data. And that was not easy to find !!Team management is a great learning experience here.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Zero-Cost Infrastructure: We successfully built a frontier-tech education tool that requires $0 in API credits, making it truly accessible for students in developing economies (SDG 4.7).

Holistic Integration: Successfully mapping two distinct SDGs (Health and Education) into a single, cohesive user experience.

Mindful UX: Creating a digital interface that actually encourages you to look away from the screen and move your body.

What we learned

It was our first time working with Mediapipe, and we successfully managed to learn. Also we have not made such a big chatbot yet, which was also a challenge that we successfully completed.

What's next for Sokrates

We want to train the model with different yoga poses. Also, we want to build a personalized dashboard for different types of people, managing their sessions and history. Also, we want to enrich our chatbot more.