Four startups co-founded by IIT Kharagpur alumni have come up with unique ways of sanitisation such as using the robot-like device to spray charged water droplets for sanitisation of large areas and Artificial Intelligence ( AI) based interactive platform through which people can get their queries regarding COVID-19 answered by AI.
IIT Kharagpur alumnus Debayan Saha has collaboratively developed a device called Airlines Minus Corona to sanitize areas by spraying charged water droplets which are ionized using the viral discharge.
The device which looks like “ Robo Sapien (human-like) operates by the mechanism of using charged water droplets which get ionised by using the corona discharge. “ The ionised water in return oxidizes the viral protein reducing it to a non-harmful molecule, opined the innovators,” stated a release issued by IIT Kharagpur.
“Alcohols ( like ethanol or IPA) are known to inactivate viruses by denaturing their protein coat. But the alcohol-based hand sanitizers is useful for individuals or for sanitizing surfaces at a smaller scale...in the fight against coronavirus. However, this is insufficient in such an emergency as it is impractical to use alcohol for sanitizing cities,” said Saha in the release.
Another alumnus Souva Majumdar has come up with an AI-based interactive platform called denguebot.in which uses AI to answer the queries of people regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. It uses integrated information regarding the outbreak provided by WHO, Union Health Ministry, the Central government and the My Gov platform.
Another start-up called Intugine, co-founded by IIT Kharagpur alumni Harshit Shrivastava ( batch of 2016) and Ayush Agrawal (batch of 2018) is utilising their product Mobile Number Location Tracking to monitor a large number of home quarantined people and keep track of whether they are maintaining social distancing.
“The Kgpians claim that their location intelligence platform, which is based on cell triangulation technology, can work on SMS-based user content without installing any application, i.e. even on basic phones, which makes it easy to implement,” stated the release.
Another start-up called Innovaccer co-founded by Abhinav Shashank and Kanav Hasija (batch of 2010)has come up with a “self-assessment smartphone app” which can be used to identify patients who face a higher risk of being infected.