A helmet that ensures that a bike can start only if the motorist is wearing it; a maritime border warning system for fishermen and a low-cost wind turbine made with a recycled steel oil drum — these are among the few innovative ideas selected across the state for the InfyMakers Awards 2016 by the Infosys Foundation, USA.
The award, which is instituted to promote innovation and ‘making’ has six winners from Tamil Nadu out of the 20 who were selected from across the county. The selection was based on the solutions that innovators provided to real-world problems. The innovators each won a cash prize of Rs. 5 lakh.
Speaking about the ‘Public Overdump Limiter (POD)’, S. Vishnupriya, a former student of Karpagam College of Engineering in Coimbatore, who, along with her classmate Arunkumar Sunramanian, came up with the idea said that she was thrilled to the award and was working towards patenting the idea.
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“After seeing bins daily overflowing with garbage, we decided to devise this POD which would detect a bin when its filled to its capacity and shut it. An alert would be sent to the local municipal office, so that the garbage can be cleared,” she explained.
Among the other award winners from Tamil Nadu, S. Aravind a student of the Jeppiar Engineering College, said he was hoping to further develop his innovation — a maritime border warning system for fishermen — to make it more effective.
“The GPS tracking device will identify the borders and demarcate three levels prior to it. The warning signal will go off at every level to give fishermen ample time to become aware of edging too close to the border,” he explained.
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His innovation was a part of the ‘social change solutions’ category along with the POD device.
Other winning ideas
Among the other innovations from Tamil Nadu were the ‘Low Cost Wind Turbine’ under the energy category, ‘Human Safety System’ for bikes in the artificial intelligence category, an ‘Arduous Therapist’ device to help people who have suffered a stroke with passive physiotherapy and a ‘Heart Beat Monitoring System’ using light fidelity — both from the health category.
Of the 20 innovators selected from across India, by Infosys Foundation, USA, six were from the State