IIT students out to design a hi-tech tomorrow

An interesting device was IIT-Kanpur’s "Vorwis" which explores the world of virtual reality and allows you to actually "touch" things on your computer screen

August 11, 2012 11:23 am | Updated 11:23 am IST - NEW DELHI:

One day in the future you might not have to hold a mouse while working on your computer. Your right hand will be able to do all the things that your computer mouse does right now. You might also just get to see what your soul-mate really thinks of you. A day might also come when part of your brain could be artificially embedded in your hand – possibilities if all things go to plan according to IIT students from Delhi, Mumbai, Roorkee and Kanpur who were shortlisted for the “Samsung Innovation Awards 2012” on Thursday.

“Just put your right hand through this glove and see, your hand is now a computer mouse,” said Abhay, a third-year student from IIT-Bombay, introducing his innovation as the “Hand-Pic’D” which “aims to provide spatial coordinates thereby making it the perfect controller for anything from the mouse to robotic arms, that understands your motion, rather than you learning how to use it first.”

Do our outer-selves reflect who we really are on the inside? IIT-Delhi’s fourth year students Utkarsh and Devashish want you to know how you really look on the inside. “We have developed a system in which you feed in your interests and accordingly are set up with a stranger who has the same interests. The stranger then tags you according to your personality. So if you’ve been a geeky sort, then your avatar designed by this software would be an absolute nerd,” said Uttarish, explaining the workings of their innovation, “Zumble.com,” which also “aims to match strangers better and enrich avatars in finding the right heuristics to match strangers or in keeping the ecosystem safe from profanity.”

The next invention is meant for those suffering from paralysis as a result of a spinal cord injury. “In a spinal cord injury the brain stops communicating to a particular part or the whole body therefore resulting in complete paralysis. This invention allows you to inject a part of the brain cells into a prosthetic arm or leg which will function like the brain, thereby allowing the person to move that arm or leg whenever he wants to, without the brain in his head telling the arm or leg to do it,” said IIT-Delhi’s Paras Ajay who has developed the “tele-operation through brain machine interface” along with team-mates Achin Jain and Punnet Singhal

More creations

Another interesting device was IIT-Kanpur’s “Vorwis” which explores the world of virtual reality and allows you to actually “touch” things on your computer screen.

There were three equal winners declared for the awards, without there being a first second or third. Among the winners was CLASAT, an audio-based context and event recognition system for mobile platform invented by Anurag Kumar and Pranay Dighe from IIT-Kanpur, “Drishti” universal eyeglasses using tunable-focus lens system and an intelligence module which quantifies refractive errors without human intervention developed by Bhushan N. Kharbikar, Nitin T. Pawar, Ajay V. Suryavanshi and Chaitali Joshi from IIT-Bombay, and the “Zumble.com” developed by IIT-Delhi’s Abhishek Gupta, Devashish Tyagi, Saurabh Kumar, Sherjil Ozair, and Utkarsh.

A special acknowledgement was made for “Vorwis” developed by Ganesh Pitchiah and Pragyanandesh from IIT-Kanpur.

The winning teams received a cash reward along with a Samsung trophy and a tablet for their institute. The awards were instituted by Samsung India Electronics Limited along with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT). The innovations were shortlisted through two jury rounds comprising senior members from the IITs and Samsung’s research and development. The projects were judged based on innovativeness, feasibility, relevance and the overall impact it could have on masses.

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