A team of Class 10 students in Gurugram has developed a portable, cost-effective and user-friendly device driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that may help correct the posture of those suffering from ‘text neck’. Excessive watching or texting on hand-held devices over a sustained period of time can result in a repeated stress injury and pain in the neck called ‘text neck’.
The Posture Perfect Device developed by the students at Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram — Tanishka Sahay, Mavya Sachdeva, Aryan Verma and Tejasv Rastogi — not only sends alerts for sitting in a wrong position, but also notifies the number of times people sit in that posture.
After an interval of 30 minutes, the user is notified about their correct and incorrect posture ratio through the push notification on their smartphones, said Sahay. Unlike the other alternative methods available in health stores, this device is affordable and easy to use, Sahay noted.
“The aim of our project was to create a portable, cost-effective and user-friendly device to correct posture. There are, at present, two categories of posture correction devices available in the market: braces for the back and furniture, such as sit-stand desks. However, these devices are uncomfortable and have a high installation cost, which makes our device a much better alternative in the market,” Sachdeva said.
“Secondly, ours is a system that can be scaled to show organisational statistics and can help an organisation trace and improve its health footprints which we felt is a burning need at this stage since one of the major challenge is that people do not consider posture to be a matter of concern,” she said.
The students said they developed the device keeping in mind the employees of multinational companies who work for long hours in front of a laptop or a computer. However, they said they could reach out to a larger customer base with their device.
“We customised our device in such a way that it could be used by anyone who is in need of posture correction; be it a school student or people working from home or anyone sitting at a stretch for long hours,” Verma said.
He said the device, inclusive of all components, is expected to be priced at around Rs 3,500. However, bulk orders from companies will bring down the cost significantly, making it an economical alternative to other posture correction devices already in the market.
“Understanding the society we live in and developing the ability to understand its challenges and explore solutions has always been a focus area inside our classrooms. It was energising to see the passion with which the students applied their tech learnings from classroom in this project,” said Mark Nelson, Head IT Department, Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram.
At present, the students have developed two prototypes installed in the school lab and have used it to test many students and teachers.
“This helped us to collect the most accurate possible data to show the functioning of our device. Post our board exams, we will take it forward and do the installation at corporate offices,” Sachdeva said.