Ideas unlimited

Seema Kaul

Lazing at a study table or wishing for a shortcut to complete mundane chores — a great idea can strike one at any time and place. Apart from the basic ability and skill to convert an idea into a great device or practice, an ideator may also need institutional or monetary support. And events like the recent Festival of Innovation 2015, held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, are helping innovators to showcase their breakthroughs. Here’s looking at some of the innovations:

Wheelchair that senses your mind

From teaching a robot to dance to creating a mind-operated wheelchair, 23-year-old Diwakar Vaish has come a long way. Diwakar, who is credited with creating Manav, India’s first 3D-printed humanoid robot which is now being used by students to practice robotics programming, is back with another innovation — a mind-sensing wheelchair.

“I was working on mind-sensing technology. The first step was the robot which senses thirst. It brings you a glass of water. It was after that I began working on the mind-sensing wheelchair,” says Diwakar. The wheelchair user wears a headset fitted with an EEG sensor. The EEG sensor senses amplifies and filters the signal from the headset and transmits it to the wheelchair through bluetooth. The wheelchair takes in data from the EEG sensor and calculates which direction the user wants to move. It also uses its own sensors to map the surrounding surface area ensuring that it is safe to move in a particular direction. The wheelchair costs Rs 2 lakh and was developed at ASET Training and Research Institutes where Diwakar heads the Robotics and Research Department.

No need to lift a finger

Sometimes even laziness can inspire a great idea. Swapnanil Talukdar was leaning back in his chair, feeling too lazy to turn the pages of his school textbook. “I had returned home from my tuition class and was feeling too lazy to sit up properly and turn the pages of the book. I began wishing that I had some kind of foot-pedal to turn pages.” He began thinking about how convenient it would be to use his feet to turn a pedal which could flip the pages of a book. Intrigued by the possibility of such a device, he developed a foot-operated page-turning device. It was later that he realised that the device could be very useful for handicapped people to read. He won the IGNITE award in 2014 for the device.

A wrapper picker at your service

Watching a middle-aged sweeper bend repeatedly to pick rubbish from a railway station platform inspired a teenager to develop a motorised wrapper picker. “Why should anyone have to bend over so many times to pick up rubbish,” was what got Diptanshu working on the machine with his elder brother Mukul. Brothers Diptanshu and Mukul Malaviya were both in school when they designed the device. The machine has a pair of flexible roller brushes at its base which rotate and pick up plastic wrappers, paper cups and plates, dry leaves, plastic and glass bottles. “The brushes are just a few millimeters above the ground level to ensure that dust and grit is not picked up. It’s ideal for picking up paper plates, napkins and cups after an outdoor lunch or dinner party,” says Mukul, while demonstrating the machine. Mukul is now a first year engineering student and says that former President APJ Abdul Kalam is his idol. The device won the IGNITE award in 2014.

To end water woes at the tail-end

Water wastage due to excessive pressure and flow rate was a problem that had bothered Sunil Kumar Mittal since his days in college in Nainital. Noticing that water would splash outside a container if it was flowing from a tap at excessively high pressure, Mittal worked out a solution while pursuing his post-graduation at IIT Delhi in 2003. He developed an orifice plate device for reducing flow rate and pressure of flowing water. Once fitted in a water pipeline, the plate reduces flow rate, which is usually maximum at ground floor level taps or those in hilly areas. “The orifice plate can also be used to resolve the unequal distribution of water in a distribution network — known as tail-end problem. Taps nearest to the water tank get more water and the water flow reduces as one moves further away from the water tank,” says Mittal while explaining that he changes the orifice plate design to suit specifications depending on the location and requirement of a water supply network. Mittal received the India Innovation Growth programme award in 2014.

UTI test in four hours

Microbiologist Anuradha Pal was a student at BITS Pilani in Rajasthan where she would organise medical camps with other students for rural women. Abysmal medical facilities meant that most women in the area were unable to get treatment for urinary tract infections. Anuradha started working on developing a portable testing machine with another biotechnology student Shivani Gupta under the supervision of her PhD guide Dr Suman Kapur at the BITS Pilani campus in Hyderabad. The test kit and readout “RightBiotic” device gives results within four hours, much faster than the usual two-three days. It also tests the antibiotic sensitivity of pathogens found in human urine, besides indicating which medicine should be prescribed for treatment. The portable battery backed device is likely to be launched soon. A single test costs around Rs 400. The device is worth around Rs 80,000, which is a fraction of the Rs 25 lakh cost of imported equipment currently used. The Rightbiotic device won the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation award in 2015.