Introduction

This all started when our college received an Invitation from SSEPD Dept of Odisha about a Hackathon on Innovating Assistive Technology for Adolescents with Disabilities. This hackathon was to be conducted by SSEPD department in collaboration with UNFPA

So here we started forming groups, There were 3 participating colleges that showed keen interest in this competition. IIIT Bhubaneswar, KIIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Bhubaneswar.

The event didn't include any kind of Prizes or Awards. The motive of hackathon was purely to develop technologies that can assist the differently abled people to live a normal life.

vivanta X iiit-bhubaneswar

The venue for the Hackathon was VIVANTA by TAJ, The SSEPD Dept. helped us in picking us up from our college and then dropping back. A total of 17 students left from IIIT Bhubaneswar for this Hackathon.

We reached around 10am in the venue and we were welcomed delightedly as we moved to the venue for the inauguration and kicking-off of the event

Introduction

We started off with various tools and technologies available currently in market for assisting the people with disabilities. This included various software and hardware related solutions. We also saw ANNIE, a popular braille teaching device which was also showcased in SHARK TANK INDIA

Different Products Available for Assistive Technology

Annie

ANNIE HELPS THE VISUAL IMPAIRED LEARN TO READ, WRITE AND TYPE IN BRAILLE, ON THEIR OWN THROUGH INTERACTIVE AUDIO-GUIDED

Smart Wallet

SMART WALLET IS A SIMPLE AND EFFICIENT MONEY COUNTER AND A COUNTERFEIT DETECTOR DESIGNED TO BE USED BY VISUALLY IMPAIRED

Jyoti AI Smart Glasses

AI SMART GLASS TRAINED TO RECOGNISE AND SPEAK OUT TEXT, OBJECTS, PEOPLE, COLOURS, PRODUCTS AND CURRENCY

Hexis

HEXIS IS DESIGNED FOR CHILDREN WITH VISUAL IMPAIRED TO IMPROVE THE JOY OF READING AND LEARNING

HEARNU Hearing Device

BONE CONDUCTION USES TEMPORAL BONE TO TRANSMIT SOUND. TEMPORAL BONE DIRECTLY SENDS SOUND TO COCHLEA BYPASSING EARDRUMS AND MIDDLE EARS. COCHLEA SENDS SOUNDS TO BRAIN THROGH AUDITORY NERVE AND PERSON ABLE TO HEAR

Ideathon

We were asked to think about new innovative assistive technologies targeting the Adolescents with Disabilities. All the participants were divided in groups of 5-6 members. We had 3 teams from IIIT Bhubaneswar, 2 teams from IIT Bhubaneswar, 1 Team from KIIT Bhubaneswar

Team 1

Members

• Swoyam Siddharth Nayak

• Ritish R Ratan

• Prince Pious Omm Prakash

• Rohit Kumar Swain

• Raj Alpha Swain

Idea

This team presented a brief Idea on how we can harness the powers and capabilities of Machine Learning and Deep Learning models to assist the visually disabled people by giving them suggestions in real time.

The team discussed various bottle necks and scalability aspects of this idea and face a good qna session from the participants and the panel members.

Team 2

Members

• Sipra Mohanty

• Chirantan Beura

• Piyali Pattnaik

• Anshuman Mahabhoi

• Maila Yuvraj

• Anuraj Singh Rajput

Idea

This team presented an idea of a smart wallet named “WALLEY” that can be used by visually impaired people to intelligently do transactions, identify the notes, locate their wallet and can be used for SOS purposed if the person is lost somewhere

This device was proposed to contain a smart reader which can detect the denomination of the note when any corner of the note is placed on the camera lens and then it would dictate out the denomination of the currency. Other than this it had a smart speaker and a GPS chip which can be used to locate the person in emergency cases.

Team 3

Members

• Sadhana Panigrahy

• Gulshan Kumar Gupta

• Abhijeet Mohapatra

• Swedeshna Mishra

• Aditya Das Swata

• Swayam Dash

Idea

This team presented an innovative method in which we can combine all the assistive technology available in the market to provide an all in one solution for the people with disabilities.

The key point of the idea was to how we can make the people having disabilities self dependent and feel more confident that they are not different from the normal ones

Conclusion

Concluding all of the above, this initiative by SSEPD Dept was a great way to introduce us to the challenges faced by the Disabled people and how currently we are dealing with this problem.

An 8-Hour Long event introduced us with various challenges and the existing solution that are available in the market and how we as engineers can work on such problem statements to make this world a great place not just for us but also for the differently abled people