Meet Shriank, Class 12 Boy Make A wearable device for memory loss patients

Shriank, a class 12 student of the National Public School in Indiranagar reaches the finals of Google science event by developing a wearable device for memory loss patients. He is one of the two representatives from India and among 16 global finalists at the sixth Google Science Fair. The final will be held on September 27 in California.

Human memory fades with age, making life of elderly people difficult. Shriank saw this happen to his own grandfather who is gradually losing his memory. This inspired the young talent to embark on a project aiming to make the life easier for those with memory loss. He invented KeepTab, a wearable device that will help people recall object locations in case they forgot where they saw them last through a cloud-based deep learning framework.

Shriank felt the pain of elderly people and understood that memory loss is progressive and can be stressful. The KeepTab can be worn over one’s clothing and it will capture images as the user moves around. These images will be categorized as reference objects to find the actual object and the information are stored on a cloud-database. For example, if someone forgets his/her keys one need to say ‘locate my keys’ to the voice interface provided by GoogleNow on their phone (the phone will be linked to KeepTab) and the search will be successful.

The KeepTab has three components. It has a micro-controller powered by Intel Edison, a camera, and an accelerometer to provide proper acceleration while the device is pinned to the clothing. Shriank is a Lego champion and those experiences of designing toys at an early age helped in designing the current machine. Further, his love of coding and hackathons made him a grand success at the national-level of the Google Science Fair this year.

The device has already attracted much attention from the public and Shriank is planning to make the codes available on an open source platform (where more people can have access to it) for its further development. He has plans of pursuing a career in artificial intelligence and wants to become an entrepreneur. He is now looking forward to the final event to be held on 27^th September 2016 and happy to meet so many talents from around the world.