Team NIST wins Smart India Hackathon 2019

A team of 6 students of National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) won the Smart India Hackathon 2019 competing with participants from over 250 institutes including IITs and NITs. The team got a prize money of Rs. 1 lakh for their unique solution to tackle a complex problem, i.e., to help commuters avoid air pollution in city traffic. Maruti Udyog has floated this problem statement in association with AICTE and MHRD, Govt. of India. They are soon going to sign an MoU with the team and the institute for the technology transfer and implementation of the same in their vehicles.

The Smart India Hackathon Grand Finale was organised at 18 centres across the country from 8th to 12th July. Over 2000 students from top engineering institutes of India presented technical solutions to various pressing problems in daily lives of people. Among the problems, air pollution has been the worst. It has especially affected the daily commuters of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru etc. The NIST team, Elite Air Cops, had students of 2016 batch of Computer Science & Engineering. K Pavan Kumar, K Ram Sai, Pallabi Mohapatra, Amisha Sahu, Sudhir Panda and Bhabani Shankar Maharana, under the guidance of Prof. Bhawani Shankar Pattnaik and Arunima Pattanayak, have developed a solution, Smart Air AI, that gives information of the air quality index (PM10, PM2.5, CO, Humidity, Temperature, NO2 and SO2) of key locations as well as suggests least polluted routes to the commuters.

It's an IoT driven system which monitors different air pollutants with the help of live sensors integrated with the system. The collected data is then synced with the cloud server which helps in computing average AQI value for different places where the devices are installed. The system is integrated with both web based and mobile driven applications to send useful data to the commuter. After a commuter mounts the device on the vehicle, he/she will receive air pollution index data as well as suggestions to routes on a mobile app or web.

Govt. of India and state governments have been organizing hackathons every year to inculcate a culture of problem solving and product innovation. Such events create a base for many startups that improve governance and quality of life. NIST students have participated in such hackathons every year and often won prizes for their innovative, open and positively disruptive solutions.