Watch the TEDIndia video embedded in this post below. The speaker Pranav Mistry, hails from Palanpur, a small town in Northern Gujarat, India. He holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering from a college affiliated to Gujarat University(2003 passout). After his Bachelors degree, he pursued masters of design at IDC in IIT, Bombay(2005 passout). He is currently a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab in the United States of America.
Coming to the video, I am sure you might have been equally amazed after watching this video as much as I was when I first watched it. While I have nothing against the credibility of his work. I completely doubt his future plans or dreams rather. Read on.
At the end of his talk, these were the answers given by him when asked about the future of his innovation:
What are you doing with this, I mean is there a company being planned or is this research work or what?
There are lots of companies ready to sponsor and interested in taking this ahead in one or the other way. Companies like Mobile phone operators want to take this in a different way. Then the NGOs India are thinking that why should we have only sixth sense, why not fifth sense – missing sense for people who may not speak, maybe this technology can be used by them to speak out in a different way.
I support the noble cause of NGOs in India who wish to use this technology for people with speaking disability. But lets come back to reality. Would the NGOs be able to sponsor the kind of investment needed to turn this into reality?? Absolutely not. They can’t spend their little treasure that they use for running their organizations on scifi technologies. Even if they wanted to spend, how much money do you think they would be having? Very little!
How do you call this technology as “Sixth Sense” technology. Even an Iphone understands human gestures. Do you call an Iphone technology sixth sense? Pranav Mistry’s technology obviously involves mundane five senses of the human being and a computer camera. Do you call computer sensing motion as “sixth sense of human being”? Sounds highly illogical. Doesn’t it?
What are you own plans? Are you staying at MIT or..
I’m trying to make this available to people so that anyone can develop their own sixth sense device. Because the hardware is not that hard to manufacture or make on your own. I will provide all the open source software maybe starting next month (Crowd claps).
It seems to me that Pranav Mistry gave this answer to impress the already impressed crowd. Are you kidding me dude? I did not study in IIT or MIT, but I know the basic fact that wherever a third party hardware is involved there is something called as drivers. Did you mean you will open source the drivers? You think the third party manufacturers of that hardware are going to be nice and co-operative with you? They would certainly look at their own profit before they give you permission to open source their drivers. You will be faced with problems similar to what open source Linux faces with hardware manufacturers. And tell me something, you said that people can use any hardware and install your open source software to build their own sixth sense technology. How many manufacturers are you planning to support with your software? All the myriad of manufacturers and models?
Are you going to come back with some of this to India? How are you going to split your time between MIT and India, going forward.
Ya, ya. There is a lot of energy here. Like lots of the work you have seen is all about my learning in India. More over it is cost effectiveness. This system costs you 300$ compared to the systems that cost 20,000$.
Or maybe even the 2$ mouse gesture system, at that time was costing around 5000$. So, in one of the conferences, I showed that to the then president, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. He said we should use it in Baba Atomic Research Center for some use of that. So, I am interested in how I can bring the technology to the masses rather than just staying that technology to a lab or an environment like that.
Give me a break dude, are you telling me that the US companies would leave you go and let you take your toys to your country? Or do you believe that you would not be tempted to give in to a billion dollar check? Do you think Indian bureaucratic babus and Tatas, Ambanis would let you serve your noble dreams in a noble manner?
Firstly, the US would not let this hardware go to the benefit of any other country at any cost. They can employ any trick or treat to retain your work with them. Secondly, even if you succeed in grabbing your toys and return back to India, where are the takers? Are you referring to Baba Atomic Research Center. Okay, they would take your technology and implement in few months in the scope of their organization and forget you. I am sure they are not interested in taking your technology forward for other purposes of the country other than their organizational uses.
I can clearly foresee few technical challenges:
- You need an extremely bright light projector to be able to see something in a tropical country like India.
- The screen projection shakes with the shake of the person wearing a sixth sense device. Isn’t it annoying to see a shake on a screen?
- Your product obviously needs an internet connection. So you are presuming that the users are using your product in a wifi environment. Sorry to tell you that wifi in all the public places of India is a distant dream. And “masses” can’t afford wifi internet connection.
- If you think about it, there are many such limitations that make your 300$ ready-for-release-product nothing but a “research prototype”, something that can only win prizes for you in paper presentations.
So stop day dreaming in the geek world and think about how to turn your product into a reality and how to bring it to the mass users.
I think your dreams are impossible to come true. If you(Pranav Mistry) succeed in realising your dream of making your invention available for the masses in India in a successful manner, I would name my kid(to be born after few years, I’m still unmarried) as Pranav!
About the Author: Sridhar Jammalamadaka is the editor of this blog, Interview Mantra. He is a professional blogger from Pune, India. He is an experienced programmer with expertise in Java, C and Micro Controller programming. He enjoys playing cricket and piano. Through this blog, he wishes to gather a large online community of aspiring Indians - students and working professionals. You can find him on Twitter at @sriavr 