Kolkata students design 'smart trolley' that tracks LPG usage

After smartphones, gear up for the "smart trolley", a unique device designed by two Kolkata students that signals excessive liquid petroleum gas (LPG) usage and also helps track it's consumption.

Designed by the 'Smart-in-tech' team comprising Arghya Bhattacharya and Dwaipayan Chowdhury, the smart trolley was the winning innovation in the city's maiden technological hackathon, the 'Nasscom 10,000 Start-ups presents SparHACK'.

Held during March 26-28 at the Jadavpur University as part of its tech fest 'Convolution 2015', the event saw around 100 participants - students and young entrepreneurs, pitch pressing problems in India and then brainstorm and devise innovative solutions over a span of three days.

Teams were asked to come up with ideas on the IoT or 'Internet of Things', a very relevant computing concept that describes a future where everyday devices and gadgets will be connected to network and be able to identify themselves to other devices.

The winning team designed a smart trolley that functions as an LPG usage optimiser.

"The trolley notifies when gas usage becomes excessive and also doubles as a usage-tracker feeding data to an online server. This will directly address issues of gas crises and delayed delivery of cylinders especially in rural India," Bhattacharya said in a statement on Wednesday.

The team won a cash prize of Rs.20,000 and a F6S Gold Card Membership, a start-up kit having online resources valued at two million dollars.