A month before Children’s Day and a day before former President APJ Abdul Kalam’s birthday, the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) on Wednesday announced the awards for IGNITE ’09 – a competition where schoolchildren across the country send in their ideas and the winners are awarded by Kalam in November-end.

This year, the winners range from a Class XI student from Orissa who developed a sensor that can detect commands made through variations in breath and translate them into commands for computerised wheelchairs, cellphones and the like, to a Class V schoolboy, who came up with the idea of using triangular wheels on trolleys, making it easier to climb steps on railway platforms.

In a video exhibition at the NIF office of DAV Public School, Sushant Patnaik demonstrated how the head-mounted “breathing sensor apparatus to assist the physically challenged”, detects breath variations to send signals to cellphones, wheelchairs and even switches on lights to convey messages.

Sushant has been declared the winner of IGNITE ’09 for the Class XI and XII category.

Yathartha Saxena of Campus School in Pantnagar, Uttarakhand won the first prize in the category upto Class VII.

Abhishek Bhagat, a Class X student of Adwit Mission Public School in Bhagalpur, Bihar, won the prize in the Class VII-X category for his food-making machine in the . The machine has small containers for various ingredients, with the facility to choose the quantity required, which will then filter down into the cooking apparatus.

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