Dogo wa chuo Kenya abuni kifaa cha kuwadhibiti madereva walevi

MK254 · 2016-10-09T12:12:46+00:00

Kifaa hicho kina uwezo wa kuifanya gari ligome pale kitabaini dereva ni mlevi, na papo hapo kinatoa taarifa kwa polisi au mwenye gari kama litakua la usafiri wa umma. ================================================= How many accidents would be avoided if a vehicle were to automatically stop after detecting that the driver was drunk or the music was louder than the allowed limit? Now this could be a reality if an Alcohol and Sound Detection System designed by university student Alex Menjo, which is among the innovations on display at the Nairobi International Trade Fair, is adopted by the government and the public transport industry. From farming to technology, food security, transport, aviation, engineering and even how to vote without going to a polling station, university students have developed simple solutions to everyday problems. While most exhibitors are out to make a killing by selling their latest products to the thousands who throng the Jamhuri Park Grounds for the annual show, the students are using the platform to showcase their innovations with the hope of getting funding to turn their ideas into reality. Mr Menjo, a fifth year telecommunications and information engineering student at the Multimedia University of Kenya (MMU), said the ASDS can help stem the rising number of road accidents involving public service vehicles. He attributes most accidents to drunken driving and speeding. “The breathalysers (Alcoblow) by the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) only solve part of the problem because you have to be caught driving and because you can’t stop people from drinking, why not stop them from getting behind the wheel?” he says. MMU students took to the streets two weeks ago to protest the death of a colleague in an accident involving a matatu on the Ongata Rongai route. His system is fitted with a breathalyser located on either the steering wheel or the side door that can “measure alcohol in the air”. Mr Menjo says this device can even be concealed from the driver in a PSV. The system has capabilities that can notify the vehicle owner and the police about the exact location of the vehicle. REVERSING TREND A micro-controller attached to the breathalyser is programmed to convert the alcohol level into electric pulses that can be measured against the level set. “When the driver starts the ignition, the breathalyser immediately measures the content of the alcohol in the breath,” he says. The information is fed to a sensor that triggers the engine to stop if the alcohol level is high. The engine cannot be switched on as long as the drunk driver is on the steering wheel. A parallel system that measures the level of noise in the vehicle works in a similar way but instead of a breathalyser it has a microphone which converts sound into a direct current before sending the pulse to the microcontroller. More than 1,602 people died from road accidents in the first six months of this year, according to NTSA. These are 89 more compared to the same period last year. Mr Menjo says his innovation could help to reverse this trend. Another outstanding innovation at the trade fair is an infrared maize sorting machine that removes aflatoxin infected grain. Created by Alex Fulano, a masters in crop science student at the University of Nairobi, the machine targets the poisonous chemicals that usually attack poorly stored maize. Consuming such grain can lead to food poisoning and even death. But using his machine, which he says can be installed in a posh mill, infected maize is deflected to a separate bag leaving only the good maize to be milled. “Vibration at the hopper causes the grains to move at high velocity before being directed to a feeder which is inclined at 45 degrees,” he says. “This enables each grain to be photo imaged causing the fluorescence chip to classify the kernel of the maize as either ‘accept’ or ‘reject’. This triggers the air valve to deflect the maize that is contaminated,” he says. And with the use of drones becoming popular for security operations, filming, surveillance or even delivery, Sheldon Indanya and Ian Ireri, both engineering students at UoN, have made what they believe could be the first locally manufactured unmanned aerial vehicle. Their design can fly up to 1,000 feet and relay images to a mobile phone. It can even be used to spray insecticides on crops. “The drone can spray a distance of 10 metres in one row per minute using set GPS coordinates and will not repeat where it has already sprayed saving the farmer some money,” says Mr Indanya. “Farmers can also use the drones to monitor their farms or even scare away pests and birds without physically being on the ground,” Ireri adds. NOVELTY INVENTIONS Still from MMU, Alfred Ongere and Waweru Mwaura have designed a smart garbage bin that can measure the level of refuse in real time and relay this information to the owner. This, they say, would assist county governments deal effectively with garbage by doing away with the need for physical inspections. Their smart bin is installed with ultrasonic sensors that measure the volume of garbage by bouncing signals to measure the distance of an object by using a trigger and echo system. “The sensors then turn the measurement into electric signals which are relayed to a system programmed to convert them to a measurement which shows the volume of garbage,” says Mwaura, a final year Information Technology student. The system has a SIM card which sends the signal to an open data sharing website which has a mobile app that can be used to monitor the level of garbage in the bins in real time. “Hotels, hospitals, garbage collection companies and county governments can all benefit greatly if they installed this system,” says Ongere, who is a fifth year telecommunications engineering student. Other notable inventions at the show include a locally made tractor by the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture, a mobile phone based voting system by Egerton University and what would pass as Kenya’s first locally made limousine made by John Kinuthia and Benjamin Omache of the Nairobi Technical Training Institute. The limousine, made from an old Nissan saloon car, uses solar energy for some of its internal operations. A year ago it was an abandoned car. “This was a Nissan B14 with a 1600cc engine, which we cut into two, stretched it and transformed it to a limousine at a cost of Sh1.5 million. It now fetches at least Sh50,000 for events,” says Omache of their remodelled vehicle that was a star attraction at the show. Device is able to stop drunk drivers in their tracks

Thread starter MK254
Start date Oct 9, 2016

MK254

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Dogo wa chuo Kenya abuni kifaa cha kuwadhibiti madereva walevi

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