Students create innovative software

A phone that senses emotions, a Braille display that refreshes on its own, and an algorithm that allows one to shoot videos even while on the move: These are some of the innovations your handset may boast of in the near future.

S Jaunani, a 23-year-old student of design at IIT-Delhi, has developed an application that can sense a user's emotions. The application, the ab3eyes, has to be used by two people, where one makes the call and other receives it. The app emotes the user's state of mind. "Using the facial recognition technique, the application imitates the emotions of the user," she explained. The facial recognition technology is embedded into the app and can read the facial expression of the person making the call. The person receiving the call, need to also have the application, will see a set of eyes on their screens depicting the emotion (like angry, sad and happy). It is compatible with all existing mobile handsets.

The app won Jaunani first position in the mobile interface category at the recently concluded Samsung Innovation Awards, instituted by the company at the IIT-Delhi along with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer. As part of its first ever innovation awards, Samsung got students working on ideas that can be incorporated in day-to-day usage. JungSoo Shin, President & CEO, Samsung South West Asia said, "We hope through this partnership, we will get innovative ideas that can be further supported and incubated at the Samsung R&D centre." The projects would be further developed and tested at IIT-Delhi and Samsung will adopt these if deemed viable.

Ideas from students flowed at the Samsung Innovation award. Saurabh Sanyal, a research associate at IIT-Delhi, designed a software product to teach geometry to visually challenged students. "On a visit to a school, I saw visually challenged children using crude papers and thermocol for studying geometry. So, I thought of developing a product that would help them in studying geometry in an easier manner," said Sanyal. His product, titled 'Refreshable Braille Display', allows user to define a particular shape on to the computer screen.

Sanyal, who bagged the award in product design category, explained that user-defined shape is processed and sent to the micro-controller as signals. The micro-controller then sends it to the tactile display as raised units, for the individual to feel and understand the particular geometric shape. This enables the visually challenged to realize the characters, geometries and process the digital information that is presented on the computer screen. The concept can be extended to larger grid sizes which can be used for full page displays. Sanyal has also been a part of the ASSISTECH team at IIT-Delhi that created the smart cane for the visually challenged. He adds that his team was in talks with Samsung to take the braille display forward.

The first ever Samsung Innovation Awards recognized projects on the basis of criteria like the degree of innovation, feasibility, usability, relevance, time to market and the overall impact amongst others identified by the jury comprising of senior members from IIT-Delhi and Samsung R&D.

Ankit Kansal and his two other team mates from IIT-Delhi bagged themselves an award in the research category when they decided to correct the shaky casual videos taken with handheld devices. In a professional production environment, cameras move along straight paths with sophisticated equipment mounted on rails or steadicams. Such facilities are expensive for amateurs. Kansal explained, "Existing stabilization algorithms operate in two dimensions and do not use camera trajectory information or scene depth. They are successful in removing only small jitters, but fail to synthesize idealized camera paths." That was when, Kansal and his team mates -- Parag Jain and Sanjay Dhakar -- created an algorithm for augmenting 3D video stabilization with inertial sensors.