IIT-Bombay alumni innovation bags GYTI awards

NEW DELHI, MARCH 20: Two former students of the IDC School of Design of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), Trivikram A. and Avinash Prabhune, have won the Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Award/Appreciation 2018.

The projects, ‘Vein Detector’ and ‘Window-mounted Solar Cooker’ designed by the two have won them the national level award, presented at the Rashtrapati Bhavan where Dr. R.A. Malshekar, Chairperson of the Research Advisory Committee, SRISTI and NIF felicitated the awardees in the presence of the President Ram Nath Kovind during the Festival of Innovation & Entrepreneurship 2018 event.

Vein Detector

Trivikram A. began this project in an elective course on collaborative innovation and thereafter took it up as a Design Research Seminar under the guidance of Prof. Girish Dalvi. He went on to work on it as a thesis project during which Prof. Purba Joshi was his guide and Prof. B.K. Chakravarthy was his co-guide. Prof. Chakravarthy furthered this work under the aegis of the design innovation center along with Avinash Prabhune to take the concept to pilot production for wider user testing and transfer to industry for commercialization.

Puncturing the vein to draw blood or insert an IV needle is often a painful medical procedure for many who visit the hospital or a blood bank. If the vein is not easily detected, the patient or blood donor has to put up with being repeatedly poked with a needle. The Vein Detector is a low-cost device meant to ease this procedure for both nurses and patients or blood donors. Its main features are its ergonomic design, its aesthetic appearance and its efficacy of use under varying light conditions.

Window-mounted Solar Cooker

Avinash Prabhune started work on the project as his final M.Des thesis project under the guidance of Prof. B K Chakravarthy. User study of solar cookers revealed that the main constraint that restricted the usage of solar cookers was the sheer inconvenience of taking it outdoors to cook. The window-mounted solar cooker enables the user to install the solar cooker in the window and conveniently operate from within the home. It can be mounted on any south facing window and the temperature raises to 120 degree in 20 minutes during mid-day due to its novel transparent double wall, high-tech materia33ls and its multiple coatings.