Smart innovations at IIT's Shaastra

Chennai: As Shaastra, the cultural fest of IIT Madras comes to an end, students from various colleges came up with innovative ideas such as trans media storytelling, new form of hearing aid, automatic shoe lace tying and so on.

Among the many events Makers summit was one, in which trans media storytelling and new form of hearing aid won the competition. Several students from other colleges participated in the fest.

According to Sambhav Jain of Vellore Institute of Technology, trans media story telling is telling a story using multiple platforms. “We used three different platforms,” he said.

He narrated the story on the screen saying that a scientist named Michael Steve who was trying to build a time machine accidentally landed up in the past and in future.In future, he found lot of problems like that of over population and over production.

He goes back to present and comes up with 17 plans to wipe off all the problems. In the first platform a rover was used, second platform was projected on the screen with animated projection of the scientist going to the past and future, while the third was a book with LED light. The image of the scientist is there in the book.

“A sensor was attached to the book which was projected on the screen,” he said. Further, Abhinav Gandhi from SRM University came up with a cap having
vibration motor and amplifier as the hearing aid.

“Usually people use hearing aids which are invasive. It is a vibration motor on one’s skull. We came up with non-invasive one wherein it is a normal cap with vibration motor and amplifier. The cap doesn’t look awkward,” he said.

This aid would also help blind people navigate routes with the help of Google map, which is attached to the aid.