America
Indian-American boy wins $5,000 award for device to help blind
Washington, May 13
Raghav Ganesh, a
13-year-old Indian-American seventh-grader has won a $5,000 award and
named one of America's top 10 youth volunteers of 2015 for designing and
building a device to help visually impaired people.
The device
built by Ganesh of San Jose, California uses sensors to detect objects
beyond the reach of the white canes used by many blind people.
He
was one of 10 young Americans selected in the 2015 Prudential Spirit of
Community Awards programme for national recognition based on their
outstanding achievements in community service.
Selected from a
field of more than 33,000 youth volunteers, Ganesh also gets an engraved
gold medallion, a crystal trophy for his school, and a $5,000 grant
from The Prudential Foundation for a non-profit charitable organisation
of his choice.
Raghav got the idea after watching a video about the challenges faced by those with limited or no eyesight.
"I
saw how, despite being used for several centuries, the white cane does
not provide users enough information about their environment," he said.
"I also saw why many high-tech alternatives are not meeting the needs of visually challenged folks."
Because
he enjoys science and electronics, and has become familiar with sensors
and motors through a toy-building hobby, Raghav decided to see if he
could design something better.
He built a small prototype and
entered it in a local science fair. He then sought advice from the head
of a local blind center, and over the next several months made five
major revisions based on feedback from blind centre staff and actual
cane users.
He ended up with a device that clamps onto the cane,
uses ultrasonic and infrared sensors to detect obstacles more than six
feet (1.8 metres) beyond the end of the cane, and communicates this
information to the user through vibrations in the cane's handle.
Raghav
secured a grant to make multiple copies, and hopes to create an open
patent so that organisations for the blind around the world can make the
device for their clients.