Bits, IIT Teams Win at 'Ericsson Innovation Awards India 2016'

Three teams from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (Bits) Pilani, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Bombay and IIT-Varanasi were on Friday chosen as winners of the second edition of "Ericsson Innovation Awards India" in New Delhi.

The awards were presented by Paolo Colella, head (India region) of the Swedish communication technology firm Ericsson in association with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), an industry interface organisation of IIT-Delhi.

The winning teams will receive Rs. 13 lakh each towards incubating the winning projects at any IIT-approved technology business incubators.

The project by Bits Pilani team introduces an innovative way for human recognition using GAIT and other body features which is an unobtrusive, robust, reliable way of human recognition which provides and alternative way to the currently established system based on face, fingerprint, and iris. The final product will be a complete software solution which will require Microsoft Kinect.

The vision of the team from IIT Varanasi is to make Indian roads safer for both riders as well as pedestrians. The team is working on a smart helmet which is integrated with a two wheeler which - will keeps both the driver as well as the vehicle safe and secure by making it mandatory for the driver to put on the helmet and have a permissible alcohol breath level so as to be able to start the vehicle.

The team from IIT Bombay are developing the next generation beacons using Li-Fi technology. So, from a laymen's perspective, the product would be a LED light source which would be connected to a receiver which would transmit data in real time.

"At the forefront of innovation in its history of 140 years, Ericsson wish to identify innovators of tomorrow and help them shape the solutions that will further define the networked society," Colella said in a statement.

"Ericsson Innovation Awards India" were initiated in 2014 to promote the spirit of innovation within engineering students at select IITs.

In its second year, the awards were rolled out to IITs, IISc Bangalore, BITS Pilani, and Banaras Hindu University (BHU), among others.

The projects were submitted by students in areas such as web design, cloud computing, storage and networking, human-machine interface, embedded and hardware system design, Internet of Things (IoT), graphics and visualisation as well as research.

Written with inputs from IANS