 "Representative Image")
A group of four students from BITS Pilani have created an SMS based biometric authentication system so that it can be used in rural areas where internet connectivity often is a challenge.
"We have developed an App based user registration and authentication system which will serve as on the go, always ready, highly secure method of user authentication for microfinance institutions who work in rural area. The application can be installed on any simple Android phone," says Saurabh Shukla, a student, whose team won the Innovation Jockeys, a contest to build technology solutions for India.
The offline solution uses the APIs for Aadhaar for authentication of users but delivers the results on text, says Shukla
Another group of engineering students from Bengaluru and Kochi came up with a device that could help detect brainwaves of a person and alert at a time of distress.
Athul B Raj and his friends George Mathew , Nitin Masant and Fausya Amlah are final year engineering students who have developed an earphone that can detect fear or distress and alert at a time of crisis to those who need the information. The earphone developed costs Rs 2500 and can work on any smart phone.
"We thought a earphone is something that can be on a person's ear whenever they are travelling. Our brains give out various frequency of waves that are associated with each emotion of the human being. We are using these waves to determine the crisis and help them reach out to the near and dear ones," said Raj, who is of the team from Cochin University of Science and technology.
Both teams are in the final 18 contestants at the Accenture Innovation Jockeys, a competition for young innovators from across colleges in India.
They now have the job offers from Accenture post completion of their engineering and if they clear their basic interview and background check. They also have the facility to use the Accentue campus and platforms to develop their product to the next level.
The team says that the same earphone can be used for detection of strokes or heart attacks and immediately intimate near and dear ones. While all these services are free to make the product commercially viable the team plans to charge customers for other services.
"The continuous monitoring helps gather a lot of data that can be used for sleep monitoring and predictive healthcare and behavioural patterns. For such things to release the data we plan to charge our customer. We want it to be a commercial and a social enterprise. We would be working with some clinics and doctors for him accessing such data is important," said Amlah, who is student of Model Engineering College, Kochi.
With cases of various attacks on women and specially after the Nirbhaya case there has been a lot of focus on wearable and application that provide women safety. These include Leaf Wearable that has come up with an IOT enabled necklace for women, Safelet a bracelet that a women to send a location details to predefined numbers by pressing the buttons on the bracelets, etc. Also a device to monitor the air pollution levels, devices for detection of early stage cervical cancer in rural women.
Innovation Jockeys, a competition held by Accenture to get students from across colleges to submit their innovations, saw a response from 800 different colleges with 3600 ideas a 50 per cent increase from the previous year.
Students this year were given three focus areas to for their innovations such as detecting fraud and business malpractices, empowering women and digital India. Students came up with ideas for smart farming, biometric based bank transaction and women safety etc.
"Most innovations we got this year are ones with a prototype ready and a a method of commercialising the product as well. Students have used the latest technology but picked up simple everyday issues such as women safety or corruption in departments and digitisation for rural area but the projects come with a business model which is very interesting," Mohan Sekhar, senior managing director and Lead Delivery centres for technology in India.
