Revolutionary Innovations by IITians Shaping a Bright Future

Today, we live in a dynamic and turbulent global community. The wave of mega-trends, including rapid change in globalization and technological advances, is creating new market forces.

Innovation is no longer just for creating value to benefit individuals, organizations, or societies. The ultimate purpose of innovation should be much more far-reaching, helping create a smart future where people can enjoy the best quality of life possible.

In recent years, there has been a ton of buzz about innovations that can help build a better world. For instance, eco-friendly edible cutlery, solar trees that harvest rainwater, and self-watering moss walls that eat polluted air. All of these ideas have to start somewhere and for some time now, a lot is coming out of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

Dynamic IITians from across the country have been picturing a better India and finding a solution to make it happen. From zero-energy villas to machines that give water in return for waste, these ideas have the potential to truly impact the way people live.

1. Passive Solar Water Wall

Two students from IIT Kharagpur, Sahashranshu Maurya, and Somrup Chakraborty, have come up with an alternative option that could act as a potential replacement for energy-guzzling air conditioners.

Called Passive Solar Water Wall, their unusual cooling system revolves around a rectangular water tank fitted into a wall — its very high surface area allows maximum interaction between the air and the tank walls, thus helping it cool rapidly. The heat absorbed is continuously removed from the system by daily household use of water.

ACs contribute to about 35 percent of total household electricity consumption and produce 1.5 tonnes of carbon every year. The passive solar water wall takes these considerations into account. This is why its benefits include no CFC and carbon emission, minimal electricity usage, and a whopping 50 percent reduction in cooling cost.

2. SmartCane

India is home to the largest population of visually challenged people in the world and many of them use the traditional white cane to move about. However, this cane can only help them detect obstacles on the ground and within a maximum range of half to one meter.

Thus, blind people often bump into hazardous overhanging branches, protruding ACs, signboards, and parked vehicles. Apart from causing injury, these unwanted collisions are awkward or unsettling and make them anxious, severely limiting their independent mobility. To overcome this hurdle, a group of passionate technologists, an IIT-Delhi professor, and a social entrepreneur joined hands and came up with SmartCane.

The foldable, lightweight, and robust cane helps its user diagnose any above-the-knee obstruction from a distance of 3 meters. Frugality and resourcefulness have ensured that this product costs only INR 3,000.

3. i-Diya

It’s a lamp, USB port, and phone charger all rolled into one tiny device the size of your palm. After three years of research, Sachin Kumar from IIT-Bombay invented this solar energy device named i-Diya. His idea was inspired by the need to find alternative options to electricity that does not use kerosene.

He teamed up with three of his friends to form Illumind Solartek in 2015, where they’re now manufacturing more of these devices. It sells like hotcakes too; the first batch of 4500 units got sold out in 10 days through door-to-door sales.

It costs between Rs. 699 and Rs. 999.

4. Solar-powered cold storage

Every year, Indian farmers lose over thirty percent of their harvest due to a lack of proper infrastructure and storage facilities. However, thanks to a solution developed by Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal, and Vivek Pandey (alumni of IIT Kharagpur), farmers can now increase the shelf life of their products and operate in a wider market.

Their product, Ecozen, provides farmers with a solar-powered cold-storage unit, which can be used to preserve produce that tends to spoil quickly, such as spinach, tomatoes, or capsicum. These products can now be stored for up to 21 days! Farmers can control the temperature from their phones by selecting the product that they want to store.

The storage unit then automatically regulates the optimum temperature. On days when there is no sun, the facility is equipped with chemical batteries that maintain temperatures for up to 30 hours.

5. Smart Street Lights

Chennai drains 331.32 megawatts of electricity, spending Rs 52.08 crores per year, on street lighting. Out of this, around 30-40% goes to waste. To address this problem of power wastage, a team of students at IIT-Madras has developed an intelligent lighting system, which ensures that street lights are at their maximum brightness, only on detecting vehicle movement.

Sushant Wadavkar, one of the four team members, said that in Chennai there is a need to decrease energy consumption and this and this is possible, as people won’t be using the streetlights, at their maximum brightness for more than 12 hours a day.

When roads turn empty, thanks to sensors and a cloud network, the lights go dim by around 30%. The project has been tested on the IIT-Madras campus, in various places, and the results were favorable. The lifespan of this system is 15 years.