Nagpur: An innovative project by two Std IX students of Narayana Vidyalayam won the 'best project' award at the national level CBSE Science Exhibition 2013-14. Aditya Bhopale and Kartikeya Rehpade designed a device that helps visually impaired people not only read text but also identifies obstacles around them to aid in walking.

The "Solar Audio Book For The Visually Impaired" project has also landed both the whiz kids an invite to the US from tech giant Intel Corporation. A jubilant Aditya Bhopale said, "The results were announced on Sunday in New Delhi and the competition was extremely stiff. There were 350 projects from across the country and each one was very good. Our product was unique because it provided a valuable service to the visually impaired."

The audio book device is just the size of regular novel but weighs around 400 grams. It runs on solar power and is the perfect mix of a device that mixes social responsibility and technology. Aditya said, "Our device reads scanned text aloud that will help visually impaired people get access to books and other text oriented things. Scanned images of texts from newspapers, magazine etc can be transferred to our device via Bluetooth. I have also added space for expandable external memory so that scanned text images can be stored."

The ultra sonic mapping helps identify objects within a 3 metre perimeter, which is beneficial to the visually impaired. Aditya, said, "Through vibrations the person holding it will come to know about the obstacles in his way." The device has a battery life of 7-13 hours and needs hardly half an hour of direct sunlight to get fully charged.

It took Aditya and Kartikeya almost three months before they came up with a working model of the device. Aditya said, "In March we were informed about the competition by the CBSE and our school finalized both of us for the project. Our science teachers, Dhanashree Waikar, Aparna Pillai, Poonam Karunakarm, Supriya Abdeo and Siddharth Sontakke suggested we must make a device for the visually impaired after which we went through a lot of options. In the end, we zeroed in on the audio book because it is unique and had not been made before. By June last week, a working model was ready and then only the refinements remained." Kartikeya made a perfect partner to Aditya contributing to the aesthetics of the device. "I suggested the outer body design and even gave the ultra sonic mapping idea," he said.

SOURCE: Times of India