To promote innovative thinking, scientific bent of mind and invoking a problem-solving mechanism among children, the Central government conducted an Atal Tinkering Marathon in 2018. Out of the 1,600 entries that were received from across India, it selected the top 50 ideas to nurture and give them a practical shape by linking them to mentors at Atal Innovation Centres.
As part of the students’ first interaction with mentors from all over the country in various fields, their peers from engineering colleges and some from the industry listened to the ideas that the Class IX and X students had come up with. Under the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), the Centre has set up Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) in 400 schools in the State, said Director of Atal Innovation Centre Konduru Nagabhushan Raju.
Girls at the forefront
Girls outshone boys in innovative thinking with three out of the four groups selected nationally from the State being all-girl teams. Only one team was all-boys.
T. Priyanka, D. Hemalatha and M. Sandhyasri from Tallapalem in Visakhapatnam district were moved by the plight of one of their classmates, who is severely hearing-impaired but is good at studies and is a consistent topper in the class. With the help of the ATLs, the girls came up with a chip that would assist their friend to hear by sending sound waves directly to the bone. All three girls are students of the A.P. Social Welfare Residential School at Tallapalem.
The other two groups are also from an APSWRS from Peddapavani in Prakasam district and Kovvur in West Godavari district, while the fourth team is from A.P. Model School at Dechavaram in Nakrekal mandal of Guntur district. The teams from Peddapavani and Kovvur came up with solutions for an alert system for damage caused to crops by cattle and a ‘smart dustbin’ for overflowing public garbage collection points with a GPS-enabled system.
RFID idea
Andhra Pradesh Model School students Shaik Akram, Nazeer and Umar Farooq came up with a cheaper and economic solution for Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)-fitted toll collection points either on highways or at parking lots, or ticketing at some places. While the current RFID-enabled toll set-up costs between ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh, the students proposed a solution that would cost only ₹1,000 per system.
