A 16-year-old Coimbatore boy is among the regional finalists of the Google Science Fair, which attracts thousands of applications from all over the world.
A student of the Indian Public School here, Nishanth Kumar has come up with a mouse for the physically challenged.
His ‘hands-free mouse,’ made with off-the-shelf parts, will perform all the functions of an optical mouse.
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The Google Science Fair is a global online science and technology competition open to individuals and teams from ages 13 to 18.
They formulate a hypothesis, perform an experiment, and present their skills. Prizes would be given depending on the student’s presentation, question, hypothesis, research, experiment, data, observations, and conclusion.
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Project
Explaining his project, Nishanth says the inspiration came from a visit to a local home for the differently abled on his birthday.
They were unable to use computers which he felt was almost a necessity now.
The solutions, he says, are prohibitively expensive as they cost around $1,000.
To overcome the cost, he says he uses an IMU for tracking head-movement and a sound/camera sensor for breath/blink input for mouse clicks.
Such a device can be created for approximately $21.91, an almost 50-time price-reduction over most present head/eye-mice, he claims. The boy says his human interface device (HID) mouse is a much cheaper option to the existing alternatives and will grant computer access to thousands of people with disabilities due to Klumpke-paralysis, hand-deformities, and others.
Easy
Its ease-of-use lets people to learn in no time, enabling them to get better jobs, access Internet, and make their lives better.
“As the device is currently a prototype, I want to make it professional by modularising it, permanently-soldering all the wires, creating a stronger-casing, improving the aesthetics and adding an automatic-reset.
I hope that one day, everyone in need will get this device. After all, it could change the world for the differently abled.”