Resume (Awaiting major updates)

PROJECTS

AUXEL – Auditory Pixel  (Dec 06 – Mar 07 group project)

Link : http://auxelproject.org/ , http://www.scribd.com/doc/7264791/Auxel-Presentation

Personal : It was an excellent opportunity to actually realise the power I had expected myself to yield as a student at one of the premier institutes of India - develop usable technology for the soceity. I was unfortunately not involved in the initial conceptualisation. However, I would like to believe that I spearheaded the developments there on. Technical issues were abound - syncing the webcam to the then version of MATLAB, processing the image appropriately to be operated on by the QT program etc. More fundamentally, understanding what would exactly be of use to the visually challenged. This required personally going to the nearby villages and talking to Mr. Ashish(blind since birth but very smart and studying for Government services), Mr. Ranjit (retired labourer, lost eyesight at work, more concerned with monetary benefits than actual technology) and Mr. Garwar (semi-blind, doting grandfather) amongst others. Since the language was not common, communicating was difficult, but using smart techniques conceived by other teammates, we were able to get across our idea. This technique was also included as a future addition to the setup as a touch tablet. Our final presentation involved taking real time photographs, processing them and converting them into sound, giving an impression to the viewer of how the user would have to interpret the sound pattern. 

But with advancing academics, the project reached only a single milestone and none further. All the ideas are still fresh in my mind and would like to resume our work if given an opportunity. Actually, the more technical parts of the project like the chip design etc. were beyond our understanding at that point, and we considered understanding that completely before delving deeper. Gradually, our interests diverged and no one continued in the same field.

Technical : Initiative to aid visually handicapped individuals. Upon training, user shall be able to associate objects with distinct sound patterns which helps in obstacle detection as well as colour perception. S/W has been developed to map 3 properties of light (hue, saturation, brightness) against 3 properties of sound (volume, frequency, pitch) by suitable conversion and sound synthesis. Involved in coding using C++ in QT4 (Framework for graphical interface) and MATLAB (Image processing tool) for synchronizing webcam and subsequent image processing. This has been implemented on a trial basis by NGOs in cities like Pune and Bangalore and adjoining villages of Pilani successfully. 

Brain Wave Initiated Alarm Clock  (Feb 07 – Mar 07 group project)

Personal : An idea conjured up by us friends as a joke on our sleeping patterns, which soon enough developed into a serious activity and had us investigating basic circuitry for noise cancellation and PIC programming. Though it was not possible to exactly get an EEG to properly test the idea, the remaining part involving simulating brain waves and running them through the device gave proper outputs.

Technical : This is a system development initiative to capture brain waves to trigger an alarm. System triggers the alarm based on β & γ waves from EEG signal received from near the cranium is analyzed (with noise reduction). This is checked for suitable frequencies on a PIC (Programmable IC). Alarm is then set when a person is adequately ready to wakeup. Involved in the PIC programming module of the project in MATLAB.