Meet the Winners

Ever since the inception of National ICT Grassroots Research Initiative (NIGRI) in 2011, 72 public and private sector participating universities submitted 5,538 FYP proposals out of which 2,067 FYPs received an overall grant of worth PKR 130 million.

The financial assistance under this initiative of National ICT R&D Fund enables students of public and private sector universities, undertaking Final Year Projects (FYP), to build prototypes that demonstrate advances in technology and showcase creativity, innovation and hands-on engineering and development skills. Under Phase-II of this initiative, a national competition was announced in 2016. 

National ICT R&D, for the first time, organized a competition of Final Year Projects at Islamabad. Diverse projects from all over the country were displayed owing to their innovation and commercialization potential. These projects were nominated by the participating universities and degree warding institutions.

National Champions – Power Watch Dog, with prize money of Rs 400,000, are Zain Qasir and Hamza from PNEC NUST for “Power Watch Dog,” which detects electricity theft through an IoT based sensor network. K Electric signed up

The First Runner Up – Smart Helmet, with a kitty of Rs 300,000, is Ali Gul from Balochistan University of Information Technology. Following a serious injury sustained by his brother in a mining accident, Ali turned to engineering with a resolve to make mining safer for often-illiterate miners.His Smart Helmet detects and monitors poisonous gases, temperature, humidity, location, and miner health profile profile — issuing warnings and alarms, and helping rescue and retrieval.While international smart miner helmets are designed for the educated , Ali helmet even caters to the illiterate. He has already sold 20

The Second Runners Up – Fully Automated Fire Tube Boiler, winning Rs 200,000, are Owais Ahmed and Hassan Cheema from the University of Faisalabad for their project that monitors and regulates industry boilers, by detecting variances in temperature, fluid levels and other parameters — generating alarms and taking automated remedial measures. Their innovation will save lives by reducing occurrences of one of the most common accidents on factory floors — boilers that blow up. First unit sold to a textile mill

Here is a closer look at some of the shortlisted projects which caught attention.

1. Currency Notes Recognizer: It is an Android application to capture an image of the currency note and identify its amount for Dollar, Pound, Euro and Pakistani rupees. It can be used by blinds as well as to identify the fake currency.
2. Brain Imaging for Different Applications: This application is a FPGA-based embedded brain imaging system for wireless real-time medical diagnostic, military and gaming applications.
3. Plantico: Farming is an important sector in many countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, as most people depends directly and indirectly on it. Among all corps, Cotton is a main cash crop in Pakistan which gives more income to the farmer. The diseases on the cotton are crit which makes the sharp decrease in the production of the cotton. The application named as PLANTICO aims to use Image Processing techniques to detect disease and provide a solution. It will save time, effort and money of farmers.
4. Microwave Bandpass filter: The broadband bandpass filter is designed using interdigital parallel coupled lines. The fabricated filter can be used in existing and upcoming wireless communication systems for spectrum shaping frequency multiplexing.
5. Brain Controlled Wheel Chair: The development of a brain-controlled wheelchair that can be controlled using signals from the Human brain. The wheelchair is useful for people who has paralysis.
6. Smartphone: An IoTs-enabled Neurotech-based smart home for fully paralyzed. It is also an android-based solution for normal people to control electrical appliances, supervise children and detect intrusion.
7. Mine Dispensing Vehicle: The objective of this work is to develop an unmanned system, capable of dispensing land mines without human intervention in order to minimize human casualties resulting from the conventionally used mine dispensing techniques.
8. Smart Sensor for Health: A wearable with app compatibility for constant monitoring of vitals for Heart failure patient to help patients to monitor themselves, keep track of their vitals that are ECG, heart rate, temperature, and activity. Alongside allowing the patients to keep track of their diet which helps in fitness monitoring and cardiac rehabilitation, set reminders for appointments, measuring blood pressure and medicine intake.
9. Urdu Finger Reader: It is an app that helps users to read Urdu printed text in real time using a camera.
10. News Portal: The News Portal app will help the reader to read with utmost ease, also analyze and compare news from leading newspapers of Pakistan. News portal provides brief and detailed news summaries, sentiment and frequency analysis and read out aloud functionality currently for Dawn, The News, and The Nation newspapers.
11. Virtual Dressing Room: A virtual dressing room where one can try clothes without the need of changing rooms by standing in front of a big LCD screen to check all the collection of that brand virtually fitting on you.
12. Ultrasound Blind Walking Stick: Ultrasonic Blind Walking stick design for visually disabled people for improved navigation.
13. Fauji Copter: The Fauji Copter is designed to handle Mission Planning For Regional Surveillance with Live Video Transmission.
14. Talking Lights: Talking lights would be used to connect to the internet and to receive notifications. This project is an endeavor to a reality that eradicates WiFi and instead uses the groundbreaking concept called LiFi.
15. Smart Eye: The smart eye is an Alternate Eye for visually impaired people using Internet of Things.
16. Anti-Theft Distribution System: The anti-theft distribution system is designed to automatically detect and control theft of electricity in form of illegal connection from the distribution line