Wheelchair design wins James Dyson Award

Amit Kumar and Rituparna Guha, Masters of Design students at IIT Delhi, have been recognised by British company Dyson as ingenious talents during the second edition of the James Dyson Award.

The students were recognised for their innovative creation that solves a problem – SAMARTH, and felicitated with Rs 170,000 as prize money. SAMARTH is an assistive mechanism that provides an easy, safe and convenient way of shifting wheel chair users from wheelchairs to other mediums, and eases the life of care givers as well as the users themselves.

As per the 2011 Census in India, about 2.68 crore people out of a population of 121 crore are affected by disabilities, which is 2.21 per cent of the total population. Of these, 20 per cent are mobility impaired wheelchair users. Amit (25) and Rituparna (26) drew inspiration for this medical aid while interacting with several such mobility-impaired patients at the Cheshire Home for Disability. SAMARTH helps in shifting wheelchair users to any other medium e.g. a bed, a car and vice versa in an easy, safe and convenient way. It also drastically reduces the efforts of care givers in handling of patients, especially during transfer.

The process took about four months, with several versions of the wheel tested for strength and stability, eventually leading to a full-scale wooden prototype. There were more than 10 prototypes and 3 improvisations made over time and an investment of around Rs 18,000- 20,000 in the process to get to the final prototype.

While the idea to bring about a required change is in place, there is still a long way to go. Next steps for Amit and Rituparna are to make the product ready for purchase in markets, and by investing the prize money. The healthcare and medicine industry is growing in India in order to aid everyone while being cost competitive. In such a scenario this innovation aims to develop a product which can compete in India’s growing healthcare industry.

This year, the James Dyson Award set out for ingenious inventions from India and across 26 other countries. After receiving a tremendous amount of entries, the activity was closed by a rigorous judging process involving a reputed panel. Prof. Ravi Mokashi Punekar, Department of Design, IIT Guwahati, from the panel says, “Samarth is a product innovation following a Human Centred Design method that is immersive, iterative and conceptually enriched by engaging the end user in an empathetic and participatory manner. The jury felt that the proposal holds novelty and is pragmatic.

It could easily bring a smile to the care-giver as also the end user.” The national winners from India will now proceed towards consideration for the International Top 20 shortlist.

Accompanying SAMARTH are two runners-up: INALI - The Bionic hand and Cargo Ground Built-up System (CGBS).

INALI THE BIONIC HAND is a low-cost electronic prosthetic hand, specially designed for people living with upper limb amputation and are from developing countries. In a country like India it was found that 85 per cent of people with upper limb amputation are living without any solution because they can't afford it. Thus INALI was ideated by a 25-year-old engineering student, to be the cost effective solution developed for people living without any prosthetic care.

CARGO GROUND BUILD UP SYSTEM (CBGS) is a novel air-transportable, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) designed for handling cargo loading and unloading operations for the Hercules C-130 at austere locations where they do not have any other infrastructure to rapidly offload cargo from the aircraft. The need for this capability became apparent during the Indian Air Force(IAF) disaster relief operations to Nepal during the 2015 earthquake when the IAF’s Hercules C-130 aircraft immediately responded with aid but were unable to rapidly offload their cargo due to lack of available infrastructure. The team identified this requirement and as part of the Lockheed Martin’s Roll-on/Roll-off Payload Design University Challenge have conceptualized and designed this vehicle.

What is the prize?

International Winner:

The international prize is Rs 26,00,000 for the student and Rs 40,000 for the student’s university department.

Up to two International Runners-up:

INR 4,00,000 each

 National Winner

INR 1,70,000

What is the competition timeline?

• National winners and finalists announced: September 5, 2018
• Dyson engineers’ shortlist: September 21, 2018
• International winner and finalists announced: November 15, 2018

Who can enter the James Dyson Award?

Any university level student of product design, industrial design or engineering, or graduate within four years of graduation, who is studying or studied in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, the UAE, the UK and the USA. For more information and regular updates on the progress of the James Dyson Award, check out www.dyson.in.