The SiliconTech team “ZEPHYR” comprising of Dhanraj Chowdhury (CSE), Smriti Nayak (CSE) and Satish Ranjan Das (ECE) from batch 2023 was declared the winner of the Code 4 Odisha Hackathon organized by Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA), at the Institute of Technical Education and Research (ITER) on 27 and 28 August 2022.
Code 4 Odisha was an all-offline 36-hour Hackathon conducted with the goal of creating innovative, creative solutions to solve problems faced by the state in the sectors of disaster management, education, healthcare and tourism. There were two rounds in the competition – Idea Submission and Hackathon. The Idea Submission round received more than 70 submissions from students across the State and the best 20 were invited to participate in the offline Hackathon.
The SiliconTech team competed against 20 teams and more than 200 students across the state to win Code4Odisha for their impactful project. Apart from receiving a cash prize of fifteen thousand rupees, the team also received a number of incubation as well as internship opportunities from reputed organisations like Atal Incubation Center – Nalanda Institute of Technology Foundation, PKare Innovations Pvt Ltd.
The SiliconTech team “ZEPHYR” had come up with CHRAD – a solution to bridge the communication gap between the differently-abled (people suffering from speech and hearing impairments), enhance the ability to facilitate communication, safeguard their rights, and ensure equal access to opportunities for all.
They developed a Computer Vision and NLP model with the application of LSTM (Long Short Term Memory) that is capable of converting human made signs into English text and further translating it into English speech. Their model could be made into an API and also embedded into video conferencing applications like Google Meet, Zoom, Skype and similar other platforms to facilitate smooth communication. It could also be used as a mobile application where the user would be able to translate signs into text and speech and also, the other way round, i.e., from text or speech to signs.
The SiliconTech winners were felicitated by Prof. (Dr) Ashok Kumar Mahapatra, Vice-Chancellor, SOA, Dr. Manas Kumar Mallik, Director, ITER (Institute of Technical Education and Research), SOA, Dr. Anurag Satpathy, Director IDS (Institute of Dental Sciences), SOA and Prof. Renu Sharma, Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, ITER, SOA.
