In a bid to stop the yearly occurrence?of stampedes in massive public gatherings like the Kumbh Mela, 18-year-old Nilay Kulkarni decided to put his skills as a self-taught programmer to come up with a solution.?
According to Midday, Nilay Kulkarni's ambition took shape in 2014 during an MIT Kumbathon effort led by MIT Media Lab and a group of Nashikkars, who wanted to find a solution to the stampede problem at the mela.?
He came up with a mat that can count the footfall of people trickling in at a particular location. Mid-Day quoted him as saying, "The cloud-based crowd system could count the number of people walking over a specialised sensor mat, which was laid on a road."
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Nilay named his this crowd-counting mat?Ashioto and made sure that it was affordable technology. Kulkarni and his team conducted trials in 2015 at the local Kapaleshwar temple.
After temple authorities estimated over 1.5 lakh devotees on a Monday during Kumbh Snan, the team put a mat, which is connected to a Bluetooth-enabled communication box, at an entry point and recorded a footfall of 40,000.
In an interview with Better India, Nilay added that the mat can be?synchronised with the train timings (to improve predictions) and?placed at railway stations to prevent heartbreaking tragedies like the one that happened at Elphinstone’s foot-over bridge.