A water quality testing technique developed by a few students of Amrita University will soon become a start-up. The students had developed the technique and prototype, ‘Smart Water’, to compete in the ‘iDeatte – The Great Digital India Challenge’ competition organised by Cisco, says a release.
Students Akshay Balachandran, Surya Murugaian, R. Parthasarathy and Murali Siva competed with students from around 40 Indian institutions, including Indian Institutes of Technology to bag the first prize – cash prize Rs. 2.50 lakh.
The Smart Water technique developed for large water bodies like tanks and dams involved collecting various parameters – pH level, dissolved oxygen, temperature and conductivity – from limited locations. The collected data is then used to generate a hypothesis function through machine learning that can accurately predict the parameter values at all other locations.
The technique can also be used to predict the water quality a month or year ahead and that will help save the water from overexploitation. The students had successfully tested the prototype across water bodies from swimming pools to lakes. Now, the Smart Water is likely to be a start-up as many companies like Cisco have evinced interest, says the release quoting Dean, Engineering, Sasangan Ramanathan. Amrita Technology Business Incubator is also in talks with the students/department.
Student Ms. Murugaian says that they had worked hard for over a year for Smart Water and were happy with the outcome.
