What’s the Gecko? So, how often have you misplaced a very expensive item? Indian geniuses have now unveiled a whole family of tiny ‘sticker markers’ that’ll help you find, track and monitor objects. Bengaluru-based Connovate technologies has made the Gecko a tiny device that you can even attach to your front door for an intruder alert. You can even stick it on a baby to ensure he or she doesn’t crawl away. The Gecko was such a hit that it was crowd-funded, attracting nearly $100,000 in funds.
‘Talking’ brains: In 2014, for the first time in our 2,00,000 years on this planet... two brains ‘spoke’ to each other. Rajesh Rao and his team from University of Washington were able to transmit signals from one person’s brain over the Web and use these signals to control hands of another person within a split second of the signal. So, in the future, your mum could cook for you, while sitting miles away. It’ll only be your hands and her mind.
Bucket washing machine: Say goodbye to that power-sucking giant in the toilet. No, seriously. The Venus portable washing system was crowd-funded with $50,000 on Indiegogo. All it needs is a bucket of water, 350 watts from the mains and it will be able to wash 2.5 kilos of clothes in about five minutes. More importantly, inventor Piyush Agarwall is now the icon for millions of stinky bachelors!
The heaviest rocket: Inside the GSLV Mark3 rocket the biggest launch vehicle we’ve ever had is an “average-bedroom sized” crew capsule. Besides the textbook-perfect launch, the crew capsule’s successful splashdown is the next step towards sending Indians to Space. The December 19 launch was the culmination of 10 years of effort and in about 20 minutes and 43 seconds, the high-value capsule, took off, entered orbit, re-entered and landed in the Bay of Bengal without a single glitch.
India’s Google Glass: Arvind Sanjeev, founder of A.R.S. Devices, may have just made his own version of the Google Glass and it costs just Rs 4,500, or cheaper than a Kanchivaram silk saree. Sanjeev, in fact, put the device together using a Raspberry-Pi-powered system and a little bit of voice recognition software and voila! Glass. Although, we recommend a little bit of work on how that thing looks.
The best health monitors: Do yourself a favour and ignore that expensive ‘assembled in California’ ‘health watch’. Because Indian firms have this year churned out some fantastic low cost alternatives to wearable tech from the West. Companies such as GetActiv and Trackmybeat are using simple, everyday sensors to create gadgets that can monitor critical indicators pulse, heartbeat, blood pressure, etc. All for under Rs 5,000
War against drugs: Sampriti Bhattacharya’s invention could save the world’s navies billions. A student at MIT, she developed an underwater robot that can detect fake hulls in boats hiding contraband. Sampriti’s robot sniffs out false bottoms using ultrasound scans. In fact, a swarm of these can scan all ships without alerting the criminals. And the best part? It costs just $600!
3D braille printer from Lego: Shubham Banerjee is 12. And in that span of 12 years, the boy is already a gift to the visually-challenged. He has invented the world’s first braille printer, made entirely out of Lego. And while the usual braille printers come for about $2,000, little Shubham’s invention costs just $350 to build. NEAT!
Detecting deafness in newborns: Every year, some 100,000 hearing-impaired babies are born in India, but there is no routine screening countrywide to detect the condition. If left unaddressed, by the time the baby is six months old, a hearing impairment can impede the development of speech, language and cognition. That’s where Neeti Kailas and her firm, Sohum Innovation Lab, comes in. Three electrodes are placed on the baby’s head to detect electrical responses generated by the brain’s auditory system when stimulated and if the brain fails to respond to these stimuli, the child cannot hear. Simple. And this is her quote: “To me, design is about problem- solving, and thinking about how I can have maximum impact on society. In a country like India, that’s never going to happen by designing the next lemon squeezer.” She has our ears!
The compact ultrasound: The VISIQ, by Indian engineers at Phillips, is a tiny ultrasound device that only needs a display like a tablet device. It’s 50% cheaper than regular ultrasound systems and will allow doctors to carry out scans at far-flung rural health camps.
Glass and lives: Dr. Selene Parekh is an orthopedic surgeon at Duke University, North Carolina. In June of 2014, Parekh live-streamed a surgery in a world first. He believes it will help train surgeons in India, which is about “40 years behind the U.S when it comes to orthopedics”.
Moon robot! The Lunar XPrize, is a global competition aimed at landing a privately-funded robotic spacecraft on the Moon by December of 2015. And the only Indian team vying for the $1.25 million reward is Team Indus from Bengaluru. They are just days away from the final verdict!
Plants ask water: Just last month, Aditya Om, from NIT, Raipur won the ‘jury prize’ at the ‘Intel India Innovation Conclave’ for making plants talk. Using sensors to measure humidity and temperature, Om designed a system that allowed plants to tweet or send texts to owners... asking for water!
Slum lights: Indians at IBM found that 70% of laptop
batteries still possess enough juice to power the poorest homes for 4 hours every day, for a year. The technology, UrJars (urja is Hindi for electricity, jars is well, jars) can help at least 400 million people, and will also solve India’s deadly ewaste problem.
