Eighty university teams in Bangladesh submitted their best ideas technological solutions to the most intractable problems affecting the country for the “Humanitarian Idea Contest.” A blind review of the submissions pared them down to 10 that went on to the final round on May 13th. Judges then chose chose three finalists. The judges were Chowdhury  Akram Hossain, Secretary of the IEEE Bangladesh Section; Md. S. Rashed Haider Noori, Department of CSE, DIU; and Md. Zakaria Haider, Humanitarian Activities Coordinator for the IEEE Bangladesh Section. The event was organized with assistance from SIGHT FLASH-Bangladesh Section and hosted by IEEE Daffodil University Student Branch.

The three student teams that placed as finalists will receive guidance in upcoming months to develop quality projects based on their ideas. These are the finalists.

Champion: Warriors of Drone

University: University of Dhaka

Project Name: FoodAlytics

Presence of harmful concentrations of formalin  in food items is a serious issue and a rising cause  of concern among citizens of Bangladesh. Lethal  doses of formalin are now present in most food items including fruits, fish and vegetables. However, lack  of reliable and inexpensive testing equipments and  inconsistent monitoring by concerned authorities means that it is up to the citizens to take actions themselves.  FoodAlytics, an innovative solution package that consists of a portable formalin sensor that you can clip to smartphone like those portable smartphone camera lenses. An Android application then performs detailed mathematical analysis on the data and plots graphs, charts and shows whether the concentration of formalin in the particular food item is within safe limits.

1st Runner Up: Redshift

University: Islamic University of Technology

Project Name: Aware

“Aware” aims at making the life of a hearing-impaired person easier and much safer. It is a real time vibration feedback device that detects the presence of sound, locates the direction  of its source and alerts the user of it. Starting from fire alarms, car horns, calling bells there are innumerable ways people use sound alerts in daily life. Our device is aimed not for speech or language  recognition but to make the user more aware of his surroundings. The device is meant to be very cost efficient and easy to use. It comes in  the form of a simple wrist-band. Lastly, the technology: several audio sensors, connected with a small microcontroller,  allows the device to detect sound intensity and direction. Mini vibration motors fitted into the wristband  vibrates at different intensities and patterns providing the user instant feedback.

2nd Runner Up: Heptacore

University: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Project Name: Heptacore

In the immediate area of conflict, the primary aim is to prevent human casualties and ensuring access to the basics of survival.This project “NURSING BOT” is designed to assist the health care of the people in conflicts. This nursing bot is equipped with both injecting and withdrawing abilities. When necessary, it  can withdraw blood for diagnosis purposes or inject medicines in the patient’s body. The most important step of this prototype is the vein detection. Since the visibility of the vein under normal light is very low, Near Infrared imaging techniques was used .There is always a possibility that the patient may move after the alignment is done. So to prevent errors  in injecting, we took continuous live video feed. If the needle starts moving towards the patient’s hand  and the patient moves, the algorithm detects the changes and keeps aligning till it touches the skin. For injecting medicines, it may require vein detection depending on the type of medicine is injected. Feedback system is necessary in all cases. Our aim was to make this nursing bot, cost effective and compact in size. And these make it versatile and widen its  application domain.