Inventions and Innovation in Indian Higher Education

 Inventions and innovation lie at the heart of engineering. For an engineer, it is the love and passion for technology which motivates them to constantly innovate, or for that matter opting to be an engineer in the first place. Invention is transformation of beautiful thoughts into palpable ideas; innovation goes a step further – it is the preparedness to mix novel ideas with commercial world to create beautiful products designed to impact the lives of the needy.

IIM Bangalore

A WHO report estimates that, globally, there are 40 to 45 million people who are totally blind; 135 million have low vision and 314 million have some kind of visual impairments. Some students at the IIM Bangalore were so moved by this hard-hitting reality reported by the WHO that they invented a new aid for the blind. The students used their knowledge and passion to help people by using a device consisting of two video cameras, a computer, and a scanning light source. The system, much like a human eye, scans surrounding objects from two points; enabling the blind to walk without using sensory canes.

This beautiful story emanating out of the Indian university is a perfect example where students utilized their proficiency, skill, and innovative skills to convert innovative ideas into reality for common use.

IIM Calcutta

In the annals of human history, technology and innovation have become two inextricable words.The technology today, is driven by the engineers which has also led to a tremendous increase in innovation capabilities. Innovation includes an end-to-end process, such that it extracts value through application. From minor quality improvements to cutting edge products and services, innovation plays a substantial role in each one of them. For many, it is the innovation which drives them towards inventions, which ultimately impacts the lifestyle of many. Students at the IIM Calcutta used a smartphone and a chip to calculate the moisture of soil. Imagine how advantageous it could be for farmers to conserve water in developing countries like India, where there is scarcity of water throughout the year.

More than the skill and knowledge, it is the zeal to work for humanity and create a product by effective and efficient use of resources is what drives the students to invent products targeting the needy. The progress of a country, one as historic as India, depends on the “innovative young minds”. It will be fare to determine that a country’s growth is always directly proportional to the innovative skills of the engineers it produces.

For many years, women were considered only second fiddle in the innovations, industry, especially in case of a startup, however, the changing global scenario has motivated and encouraged female innovators to come ahead and pitch in their ideas. Vrushali Prasade is a perfect role model for women aiming to establish themselves amongst the men.

She, along with her batch mates Shubham Mishra, and Harikrishna Valiyath; third year students from her college have built a Virtual Reality Headset – Tesseract under the company name Absentia. The device uses a mapping, clustering and resizing algorithms to convert any content which one can run on a laptop to 3D, 360 vision.