Indian Innovations You Ought To Know
Avaz
Children with speech impairment often find it difficult to communicate. Providing them with a ‘voice’ is Ajit Narayanan’s low-cost battery operated tablet – Avaz. The device helps children communicate by essentially converting stored images (that cover the vocabulary of the child) into messages and messages into speech, thereby converting images into speech. Even someone with only limited movement control can use Avaz to construct control can use Avaz to construct phrases that are spoken out loud by an artificial voice. The tablet is also designed to support multiple languages spoken not only in India but around the world.
Ajit Narayanan is an engineer from IIT-Madras and is the CEO of Inventions Lab. He is currently working with the Indian Institute of Science, bangalore, to improve the quality of the speech synthesis in Awaz.
Le Chal
Using haptic (relating to the sense of touch, in this case vibrations) technology, Anirudha Sharma and Krispian Lawrence of Ducare Technologies invented Le Chal – Shoes to aid the visually impaired. The user marks out their destinations and a combination of three ubiquitous technologies – Bluetooth, Google Maps and GPS do the rest. Once the GPS establishes the user’s locations, Google Maps then finds the directions to the destinations. Connection between the phone and shoe is established by Bluetooth and the user is on his way. Vibrators on different sides of the shoes vibrate, indicating whether you need to go left, right or straight ahead.
Anirudh Sharma and Krispian Lawrence are founders of Ducere Technologies that makes electronic and new media products for the visually impaired.
Suraksha
Suraksha is a product designed to sound off alarm in kitchens in the advent of a gas leak. The device functions on the olfactory kind of sensors which enables an intelligent machine to detect whether the amount of LPG in the air reaches greater then tor equal to seven parts per million(ppm). When detected, an SMS alert is sent to five people, who are registered to the device and a buzzer is sounded in the area, which stays on until the amount of LPG in the air reduces to a safer level. SMSes are also sent again once the leakage stops.
Gautam Kumar is the co-founder of Roboticwares Pvt. Ltd.
Zigbee
It is essential to monitor the power consumption on a real time basis not only on the billing meter but also fo rspecifit devices. To make this possible, Harit Sonit of Ecolibrium Energy devised Zigbee, a free radio frequency network-based device, which through cloud hosting infrastructure acts as a layer of communication in the current power distribution system. The main zigbee unit is installed in your home and acts as a data resource center where information regarding the energy consumption of the devices you wish to monitor, are sent. Zigbee not only tracks the current energy not only tracks the current energy consumption of these devices, but also allows you to switch the devices on/off from an online portal or your mobile phone.
Harit Soni is a telecommunication engineer from the Bangalore Institute of Technology and is the Founder and Director of Ecolibrium Energy.
Attero Recycling
Indian Generated an estimate 1.6 million tons of e-waste in 2012. To combat this growing waste, Attero Recycling, co-founded by Nitin and Rohan Gupta, has developed its own proprietary technology that extracts precious metals, including, copper, lead and gold, and also recycles hazardous materials emanating from electrical appliances. It also focuses on sustainable development. Metals are intrinsic to any electric device and recycled ones are a cheaper source to MNCs that manufacture theses apliances. According to Nitin Gupta, “The amount of energy involved in extracting one gram of copper from e-waste is roughly 70 per cent cheaper than extracting the same amount form a virgin mine.”
Attero Recycling was founded by Nitin Gupta and Rohan Gupta with an objective of providing an environment-friendly solution to the problem of e-waste.
Pomegrenate Deseeder
Uddhab Bharali is an engineer from Assam who has invented dozens of devices primarily for the agricultural sector in India. Among his noteworthy innovations is the pomegranate de-seeder – a motorized blade that halves the fruit. This is then transported to the hopper, where the seeds of the fruit are separated from the outer skin and the thin inner membrane. To aid small tea plant owners, he has invented a mini tea plant, which can produce up to 100kg of tea every day requiring only 2KW power and a space of 14 feet by 20 feet. Although it bears no similarity with big tea plants it follows all established procedures of the big tea plant.
Uddhab bharali is an engineer from Assam with 39 universal patents to his name and has so far innovated 98 engineering devices.
Source : BBC