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600 Teams, One Stage - Bengaluru Welcomes the Young Innovators of India
Recently, the CMR Institute of Technology (CMRIT), Bengaluru, hosted a 24-hour National-Level Social Hackathon, welcoming students from across India. With more than 600 applications submitted from seven states, which included Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, it became one of the most popular student-led innovations.
Competitively selected 90 teams were granted a slot to the final competition at the CMRIT campus. Participants were divided into two streams, Hardware and Software, and challenged to develop a technology catering to a real social issue. Participants were expected not only to possess the required technical skills but also to demonstrate a sense of social responsibility.
With the guidance of Dr Sharmila K P, a team of student volunteers was responsible for organising the event, taking care of various activities such as organising logistics, mentoring and evaluating. The judging team consisted of experts with extensive industry experience who evaluated each project based on the criteria of innovation, technical execution, and social value. Dr. Sharmila K P stated the main purpose of the event was to encourage students to use technology as a means to achieve social value and equity.
Hardware Winners — A Smart Wheelchair and AI That Listens to the Soil
Two Hardware category finalists demonstrated appetising interdisciplinary engineering. Such a perspective, a balance between social design and engineering rigour, is rare in innovation.
With the first-place award, Team VelocityX from Dr Mahalingam College of Engineering and Technology presented ‘The Future Wheel’ — a Non-Invasive EEG-Based Smart Mobility Wheelchair System. This invention uses EEG brain signals to move a wheelchair, eliminating the need for manual controls. The system has the potential to change the lives of users with a high degree of severe physical disability and who are unable to use a standard control system. The focus of the inventors was to leverage the potential of the system to move from “lab, to the field.
Team IronEpoch from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham was awarded second place for SoilSense, an AI system for underground Bioacoustics coupled with precision agriculture. SoilSense uses sound to provide farmers with data on the underground state of the soil and the level of pest infestation, without the drawbacks of traditional sampling techniques. In rural farming communities, where soil diagnostics are either absent or out of reach, such a system could mean the world to farmers.
The combinatorial impact of advanced engineering and social value design was recognised by the judging panel and by the cash award to both teams.
Software winners – Neurodivergent Web Access and Dyslexia Support for Children
This category in the Software division had two competing projects related to learning and digital inclusion, which are extremely important as more of formal learning moves online.
Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management’s Team Phoenix created CogniClear, which is a tool that makes academic websites more calming, clearer and accessible to the neurodivergent. For many students with ADHD, autism or sensory processing differences, standard web interfaces can be extremely overwhelming with irritating animations, disorganised layouts, and cluttered with text. Although web designers do not usually consider the needs of these students, CogniClear helps build more equitable online spaces for neurodivergent students.
CMR Institute of Technology’s Team Lexical Coders won second place with their project, LexiTrack. This project is the first of its kind to provide early detection and intervention support for dyslexia. Research shows that approximately 10 to 15 per cent of the global population has dyslexia. In many developing countries, where specialist teachers are unavailable to assist, dyslexia is still not diagnosed during the early years of schooling. LexiTrack aids in detecting and supporting dyslexia on an accessible online platform for educators and parents.
The Meaning of This Event for Engineering Students Across India
Events such as the CMRIT Social Hackathon offer engineering students all over India a chance to learn and apply lessons that their formal education may not provide. Students learn valuable lessons such as building a prototype in a limited timeframe, communicating a complex idea to a layperson, and developing a product with critical consideration for the target audience.
Students who attended this event now have a leg up on their competitors for internships and research opportunities, with a strong project proposal on a topic of interest to them. Crafting a validated prototype while competing against many participants is valuable for students interested in a potential career in product development, social enterprises, or even related applied research.
This event represents the change occurring in India’s engineering education. This change makes social impact a core measure of an engineer's or technologist's work, elevating it from an optional consideration. Competitions that assess work on a project’s feasibility and potential social impact encourage students to remember that the character of a work is determined by the audience for whom it is built. Both teams won cash prizes. Each project impressed the judges with the high level of social consciousness it demonstrated, targeting overlooked groups and the barriers they face daily.
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