never you go for a walk outside we
primarily depend on two things our sense
of hearing and her sense of sight there
are 40 million visually impaired people
around the world and most of them can
only depend on either getting a guide
dog which are super expensive or holding
somebody’s hand that can guide them from
one place to another I wanted to change
that so back in 2010 I funded a project
called later-later in Hindi means take
me there the idea was to put these four
vibrators inside a shoe that can
condense the complex zoo navigational
information and condense it into a
vibration feedback and language language
of vibrations that can guide you from
one place to another I put this project
very casually on the internet as I was
at maker I was a tinkerer in my lab and
it went super viral lot of visually
impaired people started writing to me I
got good feedback this made me quit my
job and eventually I met Crispian Chris
and I took charge and we said this has
to go to the people that it belongs to
the blind after 4 years of research and
continuous development in several
iterations this concept this
scary-lookin prototype converted into a
product and insole that you can insert
into a regular shoe that can guide you
from one place to another and also
analyze how you walk this was meant for
the blind around the world I was wanted
I wanted to continue with my journey of
innovation and putting magic into
substances and artifacts and this took
me to the MIT Media Lab now this used to
be a workspace and when I went to the
Media Lab I felt like a kid in the candy
store I mean you can replace the word
candy here with sensors robots and
drones flying around and the moment I
went there I had joined the fluid
interfaces group and it fluid I was
working on super futuristic systems
augmented reality with transfer in this
place but I realized my heart lies in
solving the problems that belong and had
local to India how do you use those
technologies that you
over there and apply to the problems
that are very local so I moved back the
moment I moved back to India I realized
that my frequency of doing laundry has
increased several times the reason and a
lot of bachelors over here would relate
to it is because of the pollution
outdoors the reason why what happens is
most of the pollution contains unburned
carbon and the unburned carbon that is
in the environment is majorly the carbon
black so I built this little contraption
that captures print the death captures
the pollution segments the carbon black
out of it mixes it with some vodka and
some vegetable oil and converts the
pollution into printing ink and what
this does is you can inject this into a
regular printing cartridge and use it
for printing or put it inside your pen
we’re piloting this project right now in
Delhi and the idea is what if we could
build these little harvesters and put
them behind the exhaust of our cars and
capture the pollution and convert and
make some frame for us making the
environment pollution free so I went for
a drive yesterday and after 30 minutes
of a drive I could capture this much ink
for myself and this is enough to run
your printers for good 15 days that’s
the major idea one major thing is
changing in India right now
in next two years we’ll have two billion
smartphones around the country probably
more people are buying more than one
however smartphones are limited by what
they can do they are amazing their
hardware they’re rock solid however
they’re very limited with whatever they
have on them the sensors they have in
them the variant manufactured and we
wanted to build a capability onto
smartphones that how can we take convert
this regular phone into a very advanced
sensor so what I present to you is
something called Jaguar
our team has been working for the last
six months missing her sleep at the
nights and getting out in the lab to
build this platform that can go inside
any smartphone and converts the phone
into a very advanced sensing device now
I’ve told you told you enough about it I
would want to show you how it works
first of all the design of Jack boy that
I’m showing to you is inspired by the
modularity of a regular screwdriver the
same screwdriver in which you can put
many screws and use it for multiple
tasks the same way you can use the same
guy and insert multiple sensors to it
this is one Jack boy and I have multiple
sensors the I can just take this one
connect it here and this phone would
become a pollution sensor I can connect
this one and I can take medical
healthcare to small villages this
becomes my ECG and blood pressure
monitoring device there’s this one I
connect this and becomes my soil sensor
and so on
[Applause]
so I just connect the sensor for example
in this one I put some water you can
tell I have a love for what car so I put
some water and I put in the other glass
some vodka connect the Jaguar to the
alcohol sensor probe it over there and I
can sense how much alcohol content is
there in the liquid that isn’t in front
of me now what does that mean law
enforcement around this country can give
can let the policeman use their
smartphones and and you know you won’t
what if you could connect a simple soil
sensor to your smartphone and enable
every farmer in the country to use the
advanced sensing capabilities over here
it’s some water and I’m trying I’m just
I just insert the probe into it and I
get the value of turbidity and pH it
could tell you what fertilizes the soil
needs you just probe into the soil and
will tell you what fertilizers are
required by the soil that’s the major
idea and now the power of smart phones
over here they already have so many
sensors on them they already have a
display we don’t need to make repetitive
hardware that’s the major concept over
here I come back to pollution I take
this pollution sensor insert into Jack
boy and light up a matchstick in this
particular example this could very well
be of exhaust of a car or the anything
that I missed pollution and you can just
tell what is the pollution level of
environment so over here I am getting
the ppm values correlated with the GPS
data on the phone what does that mean I
went for a drive around Bangalore and
this is the data that I captured this
shows the heat map value of how much
pollution levels were inside the area
that I drove to the area the peaks that
you see was where I my house was located
so I had to change my house that’s the
idea of giving power of sensing to the
smart phones so we want to make
thousands of these right now and take it
to the people who haven’t been exposed
to anything beyond smart phones the
power of sensing and before I get up
this stage I would like to quote read a
quotation that I read in a fortune
cookie a few days ago if I was given an
are to solve a problem I would spend 55
minutes thinking about the problem and
five minutes thinking about the solution
whatever problems we might have around
us however big they are if you apply a
little bit of technology and science and
if you believe me the problems the
solutions those problems might right
might lie right in front of our eyes
like these ones in front of me thank you
Oh [Applause]