Technology Development
Five technologies have been developed and transferred till date. The technologies have been transferred to Samsung India, BSNL India and LG Soft India. The description of the development and technology transfer in this regard is listed below.
1. Indoor Device Localization
1. Indoor Device Localization A technology to localize devices using Bluetooth and Wi Fi Signals was developed as part of the project for Samsung Research Institute Delhi. Smart variations like localization using Bluetooth/Wi Fi only along with tracking of these devices with limited information and dead reckoning was developed and transferred to Samsung Research Institute Delhi
2. Image Background blurring
An algorithm and technology for background blurring in images and videos was developed for LG Soft India as part of the project taken up for the same. This technology which works under various lighting conditions and background/foreground movements was transferred to LG Soft India
3. Digital Mandi for the Indian Kisan
Objectives :
• To enpower the Indian farmer with information about the price of his produce at the market of his choice
• To make mandi price information easily accessible to the Indian farmer on his cell phone
• To personalize this information based on the farmer requirement while ensuring very low costs for delivering this information
• To make this information available in his/her local language via voice, and SMS.
• To thereby economically enpower the farmer for better livelihood
Initiatives :
• Develop personalized farmer profiles at the ground level in each state with the assistance of DMI
Ministry of agriculture, and State Agriculture Marketing Boards.
• Deliver the information requested by the farmer in their local language via voice using TTS, and SMS at affordable (or zero) cost with support from the state government.
• Query using text for farmers with GPRS enabled phones.
• Complete local language support available for for Hindi, Odiya, Punjabi, Marathi, and Kannada.
Impact :
• Service was made operational in the States of Haryana ( for 1.7 years) and Odisha (for 7 Months) with support of State AMB.
• 15000 farmers from Haryana and 22000 farmers from Odisha are currently using the personalized voice and SMS service. Many users also access the GPRS service available on BSNL Live. Positive user feedback received
Additional Information and Technology Transfer :
With this service Indian farmers will be able to know ‘mandi moods’ (rates) sitting on their khats (Cots) and in ‘Chaupals’ with mobile in their hands. This will enable farmers to decide the rate and time of selling their produce. The service is available on inexpensive cell phones ranging from Rs. 1000 – 1500, with SIM cards from any service provider. The service leverages on the extensive reach of cell phone services in rural India, enabling the farmers of remote areas with power of information. Technology developed by IIT Kanpur at the BSNL – IIT Kanpur Telecom Center of Excellence. Union Ministry of Agriculture, Respective State Governments, State Agriculture. Marketing boards, National Informatics Corporation, BSNL, and IIT Kanpur are the stakeholders. Societal inclusion, Citizen centricity, User centricity, and affordable cost are the hallmarks of the service. BSNL will ensure the adherence to citizen charter and play an active role in taking the service to the remotest areas for inclusive development. The technology transfer is is completed to BSNL.
4. Intelligent Video Retrieval
Retrieving video data for the time interval of interest finds applications in numerous fields including education, news, and entertainment. As part of ongoing work at BITCOE an intelligent video retrieval system has been developed for the cell phone. With the advent of 3G services in India which is expected to become cheaper by the day such video retrieval systems can become common place including applications like agricultural information, lecture, meeting, speech viewing being a few of them. In the current system speech Recognition tools are used to extract a time aligned transcript from the video. Important keywords are then recognized from the transcript. These keywords and time of their occurrence is then indexed by the information retrieval system. Video can be searched by the keywords and viewed from where these keywords occur. Currently only a few selected videos can be accessed from the system. A flash enabled 3G cell phone can be used to access this system for optimal performance.
Additional Information and Technology Transfer :
The system was deployed on BSNL LiVE. It received around 200-300 users per day during deployment.
The technology transfer has been completed to BSNL
5. Audio and Video Analyzer
Two technologies for content matching in Audio and Video have been developed for LG Soft India Bangalore. The technology has been handed over to LG electronics for integration into Call Center and DTV test bed respectively.