A student of OMOTEC, edtech company specialising in coding, robotics, innovation and research, has won the Google India Code to Learn 2021 competition.
Moksh Nihalani, using MIT’s open-source software for Android App development for his project titled ‘PRISM- Smart Communication’, has won the top spot at the annual National event geared to promote computer science among students in grades 5-12.
OMOTEC had 24 participants compete at the national level, of whom five had qualified as finalists.
OMOTEC’s robotics-, ML- and AI-led mentoring programmes encourage students to learn, analyse and solve real-life problems with new-age and meaningful solutions and products. The goal is to equip students with the wherewithal to work in fields poised for growth in the future.
OMOTEC Co-founder, Shekhar Jain says, “Omotec aspires to be the MIT of India with our insightful techniques, rooted in robotics and coding, of experiential learning in mathematics, science and technology.”
The Google Code to Learn aims to strengthen the foundation for computer science among pre-university students by providing a space to code and apply computer programming for their entries.
The participating students in classes 5-10 get to create projects using either Scratch (to create stories, games and animations), which is a stepping stone to the world of computer programming or MIT’s open source tool for creating Android Apps. These are block-based coding tools which don't require prior knowledge of programming languages.
Students in classes 9-12 may use Google Cloud AutoML, which familiarises them with the concepts of Machine Learning (uses data to teach computers to mimic human behaviour) and Artificial Intelligence, in an engaging manner.
Here’s a look at the winner and the finalists’ projects:
Google India Code to Learn 2021 winner: Moksh Nihalani (MIT App)
Project: PRISM- Smart Communication
Around 72 percent of parents of hearing-disabled children in K-12 don't know sign language (mostly ASL as 55 percent of such children use the language in K-12 schools). Project Prism is an app which lets people with hearing loss communicate easily with others and lets those without hearing disability communicate with friends and acquaintances with the disability.
Google India Code to Learn 2021 finalist: Shayaan Doshi (MIT App)
Project: “Secure Child”
The project is an app made for the sole purpose of teaching children about their safety. It has images and videos teaching children about different types of abuse such as physical, sexual, or emotional, in their familiar and nearby surroundings. The app lets them report to their parents or a childcare centre, if needed. The app even allows the user to take a photo of a person to forward to their contact list, along with their location, for seeking quick and effective help in an unsafe situation.
Google India Code to Learn 2021 finalist: Veer Mehta (Google Cloud AutoML)
Project: “Dental hygiene and cavity identifier”
The majority of Indians are either ignorant of or unable to afford dental care. Dental care in tier II and III cities and rural areas are missing resulting in low coverage of a bulk of our population. Dental care is also expensive for many low-income families. The app will ensure identification of a host of dental issues with just a photo of the user’s mouth, saving cost and preventing neglect at an early stage of such health problems. With smart devices widely used in rural areas, the app would also be easily accessible .
Google India Code to Learn 2021 finalist: Yuthika Singh (Google Cloud AutoML)
Project: “Self-chat analyses”
Around 90 percent of teenagers aged 13-17 years use social media to connect with others and showcase their feelings, the world over. Yet, social media can take a toll on a teenager’s mental health, polarising their emotions. Left unaddressed, social media stress may cause severe emotional imbalance spanning extreme happiness and extreme sadness and anxiety. The ML-based app can analyse a document to isolate the emotional categories based on the text, and has been used to understand a teenager’s emotions by capturing key words in their social media chats, for timely help.
Google India Code to Learn 2021 finalist: Dhyey Shah (Google Cloud AutoML)
Project: “Identifying plant diseases using machine learning”
Plant diseases are a critical concern all over the world, including India. They lead to a reduction of crop yield, eating away at the farmer’s income.
The early identification of these plant diseases is tough in rural areas which leads to an entire crop being spoiled. From the lack of awareness and knowledge, farmers end up putting excessive pesticides and fertilisers, affecting the quality of the soil of the farmed land. The project will help farmers to identify plant problems early in the disease life-stage based on leaf-symptoms.
