Security device ‘Safer’ and wearable device ‘Smart Earphone’ bags funding from Ericsson

Swedish mobile telecom equipment maker Ericsson will fund two projects developed by IIT students to promote the spirit of innovation, as well as develop innovative tech solutions for the benefit of society as well as the industry.

The two winning projects were, Safer from IIT Delhi and Smart Earphone from IIT Roorkee.  The two winning teams will be supported by Ericsson India financially to the extent of Rs 10 lakh each towards incubating the winning projects at any IIT approved technology business incubators.

The project, Safer, is a complete stand-alone personalized human security device which can use any type of communication system such as internet, SMS, or Near Field Communication to alert your loved ones when in a distress situation. It also uses multiple cellular phone towers to transmit data and triangulate a victim's position.

And, Smart Earphone, is a wearable device for everyone that can amplify and attenuate selective sounds. The user can decide whom/what he/she wants to selectively hear and at what volume. The device will be integrated to smartphone via an app. All the audio signal processing will be done by the app only.

Ericsson in association with the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) announced these winners of ‘Ericsson Innovation Awards 2015’ at the IIT Delhi.

Ericsson Innovation Awards were initiated last year within engineering students at select IITs. A total of 67 projects were submitted by IIT students from Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Roorkee and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) .The projects submitted were in the areas such as web design, cloud computing, storage and networking, human-machine interface, embedded andhardware system design, MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output), machine-to-machine/Internet of Things, software-defined networking, open source, signal processing, graphics and visualization, as well as research. 10 proposals were shortlisted in the month of March 2015 on criteria such as degree of innovation, feasibility, scalability and the overall impact on masses.Each shortlisted proposal was given an incentive by Ericsson to complete the initial prototype within two months.