Abundant Karanja Innovates Passenger Overload Detector
Abundant Karanja, a first year student studying Urban Planning at the University of Nairobi, was among the students who presented his innovation at the UoN Talent day on Friday March 12, 2021. He had a one-on-one chat with Corporate Affairs office and this is what he had to say.
Kindly introduce yourself: My name is Abundant Karanja Chege, I am 19-years old from Murang'a County. I am a first year student at the University of Nairobi, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning.
We first saw you at the Talent day presenting your innovation. Can you tell us more about it?
I innovated the Passenger Overload Detector. This is a device that uses infrared technology to detect excess passengers in Public Service Vehicles and automatically alerts the NTSA. It utilizes a counting mechanism to achieve this.
How did you come up with this innovation? sometimes last year, during lockdown when the government gave the directive requiring Public Service Vehicles to carry less passengers in order to practice social distancing, I thought about it and assembled a few things: Arduino(Italian) development board ( a motherboard), Passive Infrared Motion Sensor, LCD display, Jumper wires, an ultrasonic sensor, a buzzer, GSM module and a bread board and a relay and came up with this innovation that I called Passenger overload detector.
The detector counts people as they board and alight the vehicle and alerts NTSA when its overloaded.
How did it feel to present it on Talent Day? When I saw the Talent Day advertisement, I was elated to present my innovation to everyone, especially the Vice Chancellor, that is not something that happens often. This platform was a good way of making my innovation known to the public.
What motivated you to pursue your field of study? I have a friend who works as an urban planner in Murang'a county government and he inspired me to take the course because he gave me more information about the course and job availability in the market.
Have you always wanted to pursue a career in Urban and Regional Planning? Growing up I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, but I did not have any knowledge on what the course entailed.
What else have you innovated/planning to innovate? I want to develop a website that helps high school students gain a better understanding of the careers they wish to pursue in the future. High School students do not have a place they go to to learn more about the careers that they would like to pursue. Therefore, this website would be a platform for Companies/organizations to choose a group of students and take them through the field for them to understand what the specific career that they deal with really entails.
This will help more people pick the right course for the career that they would like to pursue.
What do you do with your free time when you are not working on your innovations? I love music, I am actually a pianist and I do programming in my free time.
