BENGALIRU: Nothing lasts forever, certainly not human memory. When
Shriank
K embarked on a project, his aim was to make the life easier for those with memory loss. His invention,
KeepTab
device, a
wearable-device which, through a cloud-based deep learning framework, helps people recall the location of objects in case they forgot where they saw them last.
Shriank is one of the two representatives from India and among 16 global finalists who will be competing at the sixth
Google Science Fair slated to be held on September 27 in California.
Having seen his grandfather gradually losing his memory each time he visited, Shriank, a class 12 student of the National Public School in Indiranagar, developed the device because he felt "memory loss, although gradual but progressive can be very stressful." "The device can be worn over one's clothing and images will be captured as the user moves around. They will be categorized as reference objects to find the actual object. All this information is stored on a cloud-database. If I'm looking for my keys, I will just have to say 'locate my object' to the voice interface provided by
GoogleNow on my phone (which the device is linked to) and the search will return successful," he claimed.
READ ALSO: 2 Indians in Forbes '100 richest tech tycoons' list KeepTab comes with three components, a micro-controller powered by
Intel
Edison, a camera and an accelerometer to provide proper acceleration while the device is pinned to the clothing. A Lego champion, Shriank said much of his skills at designing and developing come from his exposure to early age design toys like Lego that his father bought him. His love for coding and hackathons made him a grand success at the national-level of the
Google Science Fair this year.
"The device has been attracting the attention of many people. I'm planning to make the codes available on an open source platform so more can have access to it and develop it further," he said, adding that he plans to pursue a career in artificial intelligence and combine the same with entrepreneurship.
"All these days, we had no clue who we were competing against as it was all onl ine. Now, I will be seeing some really competitive talent from across the world. This is an amazing opportunity to share that no matter what you want to try, you must go for it because you never know how far it would take you. KeepTab was just an idea and now it's a real concept that can be helpful," he added.