CHENNAI : “The country’s women and children are unsafe. Period. I was deeply affected by what was happening around me. But, two incidents were the breaking point — The Delhi rape case and the Shakti Mills gang-rape incident. I wanted to do something for our women and children to feel safe and perhaps guard themselves,” says 26-year-old K Mohanraj, who has devised an advanced self-protection gadget named ‘e-sword’.
The gadget is GPS enabled. So, whenever a woman is in trouble, her thumb impression on e-sword’s sensor will activate the GPS mechanism. “This will alert the police and family members, along with location details. The device is also a potent weapon that can deliver an immobilising electric shock on the attacker. It works on the principle where high-voltage pulses are applied to a person’s muscle. This results in instant fatigue, weakness, loss of balance and unconsciousness.
The offender will be weak and disoriented for several minutes giving sufficient time for the person to escape from the offender,” he says.The first-generation graduate from Erode recently won the CavinKare-MMA Chinnikirshnan Innovation awards 2018. “It has always been my dream to engineer a device that will create an impact. Being a first-generation graduate, academic and financial challenges were aplenty. But, I was driven by my dream to innovate. My father, who is a building contractor, and my mother, a homemaker, have been my biggest support, “ says the engineering graduate from Velalar College of Engineering and Technology.
Mohan currently runs Shree Adheeswaran Technologies and e-sword is a product of the firm. But, the ideation of the GPS-enabled gadget goes back to his college days. “It was part of my final year project. I didn’t want it to remain a mere project and decided to develop it. For the last four years, under the guidance of professors L Peter Stanley, KR Valluvan and KS Senthil Prakash, I have been working on bettering the prototype and addressing its shortcomings,” he says.
This gadget is built on an Arduino controller board. “The bio-metric thumb impression of the purchaser is registered on its integrated circuit, so no one else can use/misuse it,” he says. After registering the bio-metric thumb impression of the owner on the instrument, signals are sent out using the Arduino controller. “As soon as the signal is received, the control roomwill get signals from the AC Board.
Then it will be possible to identify the place from where the signal has been generated,” he explains. The signal will be monitored by a government aided emergency response service. This will be finalised once the working model is patented. He is currently making it completely foolproof and is looking for a government tie-up.