5th Edition of Samsung Innovation Awards at IIT Guwahati Encouraging Young Innovators to Pursue their Ideas

Samsung conducted the 5th annual edition of Samsung Innovation Awards 2015 at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Samsung Innovation Awards aims at recognizing and rewarding innovations that have the potential to revolutionize everyday living and enables students to take this to the next level.

Taking the first prize was team Sishir Kalita, Vikram CM, Akhilesh Kumar Dubey with assistance from Prof SRM Prasanna and Dr. Abhishek Srivatsava for Development of a mobile application for the hyper nasality assessment of cleft lip and palate (CLP) patients. The other two teams were Tanmay Shankar, Prof. SK Dwivedy for Hybrid Assistive Wheelchair Exoskeleton and Manas Das, Bijay Manali, Prof. S Bhattacharya for GSM Based Automatic Cooking Machine.

The awards were presented by Dr Aloknath De, Senior Vice-President & Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute, India – Bangalore.

Samsung Innovation Awards 2015 saw an overwhelming response of which 7 teams got an opportunity to present their ideas to the eminent jury comprising Dr. Aloknath De, CTO, SRIB; Dr. Hemant B Kaushik, Chairman Technical Board, IITG, Dr. Anupam Saikia, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, IIT-G. The top three winners were given prizes worth INR 2.5 lakhs. The other finalists received consolation prizes of INR 40,000. Samsung R&D Institute – Bangalore will engage with the award winners to further develop their innovations.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Aloknath De said, “Samsung has been at the forefront of innovating for a smarter future and at Samsung R&D Institute – Bangalore, our continuous endeavor is to develop technology that helps enrich lives of our consumers. With the Samsung Innovations Awards 2015 we endeavor to catalyze research, leading with innovation across the student community. IIT Guwahati has a strong pool of extremely enterprising students and talent with some bright ideas that deserve recognition. We are pleased to see the level of innovation and creativity among these IIT students; we had a delightful time vetting through and shortlisting entries.”

The competition witnessed a magnitude of path-breaking innovations, shortlisted from 41 entries down to 7 most impactful ones. The innovative product ideas and solutions were from across themes, including Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled, Smart Homes & Buildings, Infotainment, Digital Services and Intelligent Personalization for Smart Devices.

Dr. Hemant B Kaushik, Chairman Technical Board, IIT Guwahati, said, “IIT Guwahati as an institution focuses on inculcating innovation and thinking innovatively to develop knowledge based solutions for a better tomorrow. Working with an R&D Centre such as the SRI-B gives our students the added perks of understanding the kind of research and solutions the industry expects and requires.”

The 2015 edition of the Samsung Innovation Awards was initiated at IIT Guwahati campus three months ago through an open entry where students submitted proposals for their innovative ideas. Shortlisting process was led by IIT Guwahati Professors and the SRI-B team who selected the finalist. The final teams presented their idea to the panel of judges at the IIT Guwahati campus. The winning project was selected based on the degree of innovation, feasibility, usability, relevance and overall impact on masses.

Conceptualised in 2011 the Samsung Innovation Awards seeks to support and encourage young talent/ professionals who have an innovative approach, seek to improvise different systems and processes, aims to develop indigenous products and services for fulfilling mass needs thereby transforming lives and creating sustainable solutions for the benefit of the society at large.

Over the years, Samsung Innovation Awards has become one of the most eagerly awaited ideation contest at IIT’s and also due to the enthusiastic participation from the student community Samsung continues to provide the next generation of Indian innovators and entrepreneurs an avenue to showcase and advance their engineering skill sets.

Synopsis of shortlisted projects: Samsung Innovation Award 2015

Title: A Hybrid Assistive Wheelchair Exoskeleton (Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled)
Name of the Student: Tanmay Shankar with assistance from Prof. SK Dwivedy
Background: 7.5 million individuals suffer from limited severe motor disabilities across the globe, 1.1 million of them reside in India. Among these disabilities are muscle weakness and partial and total lower extremity paralysis.
Proposal – Development of a novel hybrid between the common wheelchair and the exoskeleton, to provide assisted mobility over various terrain. Facilitate rehabilitation and physiotherapy of individuals suffering from limited physical mobility.
Also provide assistance to users across multiple daily activities. Utilize the advantages provided by the common wheelchair and on-going progress in exoskeleton technology to achieve simultaneous mobility and rehabilitation of the user.

Title: INVISYBLE – An Intelligent Vision System for Blind Enablement (Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled)
Name of the Student: Tanmay Shankar, Abhijat Biswas, Venkat Arun
Background: As of August 2014, WHO reports 285 million people with visual difficulties. 80% of these all visual impairments can be cured or avoided altogether with appropriate treatment and cure. However, surgeries are expensive and skilled doctors are not readily available everywhere, especially in developing countries like India (which accounts for the largest share in the 285 million mentioned).
Proposal – InViSyBlEis an assistive stereo vision device designed to assist individuals with visual impairment with daily tasks, helping them to go about their daily lives more independently. The device is capable of a set of behaviours, each of which supports the user in a particular set of tasks. The user may toggle between which behaviour is active depending on the situation. User interactions with the device are modelled on real life assistance from other peoples. Emphasis is provided to making the device accessible to visually impaired individuals of all strata of society, keeping in mind blind users in developing countries.

Title: A suggested solution of cleaning system for washing machine’s drum, keeping
the system’s efficiency intact (Smart Homes & Buildings)
Name of the Student: Sujan Kalit with assistance from Dr. Bhubaneswar Mandal
Background: Home appliance manufacturer in the world continuously strive to minimize the amount of energy used by their appliances and design their products to operate in a more environment friendly manner.
Proposal – Survey analysis showed after sales service for a washing machine in a customer place is of two types, first one which is easily detectable and can be solved by replacing small parts or servicing. But the second one involves a long process, cost and time.One of the common problems is the damage of the machine’s drum especially the inner metallic drum, caused by deposition of dirt materials on the surface during the washing cycle.The main goal of the project is to prevent such damage by implementing an innovative idea with considerable power savings.

Title: An application for Augmenting real interactive experiences using school Textbooks and teaching aids (3D for Infotainment)
Name of the Student: Gunjan, Anmol Srivastava, Himanshu Bansal, Mannu Amrit with assistance from Prof. Pradeep Yammiyavar
Background: The innovation provides a rich interactive 3D visual explanation on a personal touch screen device and in a language of the student’s / teacher’s choice.
Proposal – To build an application using open source software platforms using which devices, when used in conjugation with textbook pages, figures, posters, learning objects, will provide dynamic interactive explanations. Feed the basic engine with text book centred e-learning content developed in 3D, once content is downloaded by the user to a personal device the student / teacher has to simply point the device to a particular figure/ chart in the text book or object in the learning environment and get a 3D interactive augmentation in the form of explanations and demos that aid learning.

Title: GSM Based Automatic Cooking Machine (Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled)
Name of the Student: Manas Das, Bijay Manali with assistance from Prof. S Bhattacharya
Background: Disabled person faces many problem while cooking since cooking itself is a complex process.
Proposal – A disabled person/ normal person don’t have to get up every time or have to be near the system for checking the food as once the system starts it does everything automatically till the food is prepared. Automation is a method of making an apparatus, a process, or a system operate automatically. It’s the creation and application of the technology to monitor and operate, control the production and delivery of products and services. Automation or automatic control is a control system or combination of control systems for performing different kinds of equipment’s and process.

Title: Development of a mobile application for the hyper nasality assessment of cleft lip and palate (CLP) patients (Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled)
Name of the Student: Sishir Kalita, Vikram CM, Akhilesh Kumar Dubey with assistance from Prof SRM Prasanna and Dr. Abhishek Srivatsava
Background: CLP is the 2nd most common birth defect in the world affecting 1 in every 500 to 1000 births worldwide. A child is born with a cleft somewhere in the world every 2 minutes.
Proposal – Design a speech processing based non-invasive reliable cost effective android application for the CLP speech assessment which will shorten the diagnostics procedure and minimize the frequent visit of patients to therapy center.

Title: Improving hip and spine stability of trans-femoral amputees by deep squat using the inexpensive polymer/composite based polycentric knee joint (Assistive Solutions for the Differently Abled)
Name of the Student: S Arun (PhD), Kishore Kumar, Dr. S Kanagaraj
Background: 10% of the world’s population experience some form of disability or impairment (WHO Action Plan 2006-2011) Census India 2001 – 2.1 % (28 % locomotive disability) of the total population have disabilities, whereas it is 2.21% (21 % locomotive disability) as per Census India 2011.
Proposal – First generation polymeric based passive polycentric knee joint. The significant advantages of the product are: light weight, inexpensive, high stability, compatible knee adapter, extension bias, integrated form of polycentric and single axis knee joint, extended service life, and durability.