Sanjay Puri, a pupil from Nottingham High School, has been crowned the winner of the Triumph Design Awards, a national engineering competition. He was awarded first place for a fall detection and alert system aimed at the care sector.
Sanjay’s entry was inspired by a visit to a local care home, where he realised that there are few safeguards in place to ensure a quick response from staff should a resident fall. The sixth former developed a fall detective floor that looks at the surface distribution patterns on the floor, analyses them and sends the data to a separate panel, where an alert can be triggered.
The competition was open to sixth form and college design & technology students, with the aim to encourage creative thinking and innovative problem solving. Entrants are given a range of design briefs that identify various challenges to explore and solve with an original design. After the initial stages of the competition, 25 finalists were invited to present their entries to a judging panel.
“I am delighted to have won the competition,” said Sanjay. “The system that I have developed tries to maintain the dignity of care home residents for as long as reasonably possible by enabling them to safely pursue going to the bathroom alone without the need for dedicated assistance or devices. I believe that the product I have developed is marketable not only to the care sector but other sectors too and have applied for a patent for it.”
His prize for winning the competition is a two-week paid design internship at Triumph Motorcycles Ltd, the opportunity to undertake a sponsored degree on a related course alongside periods of paid work at Triumph, a Triumph factory tour and £500.
