This 14-year-old has an answer to health woes associated with long hours of sitting

14-year-old Manaswith Shankar has come up with a perfect solution for individuals who spend a considerable amount of time sitting before computers. As sitting for long hours is linked to various health ailments, designing the 'smart chair' was an attempt to help those people who suffer from such problems, especially techies.

A Class IX student, Manaswith Shankar has developed a prototype on a plastic chair that has a timer, DC motor (vibrator), buzzer and airblower. The cmart chair works through 555-timer circuit.

He has also won a prize at the INSEF Regional Science Fair in Rajkot last January for designing the 'smart' chair.


How does the smart chair work
The plastic chair has a timer, DC motor (vibrator), buzzer and airblower. The smart chair works through 555-timer circuit. The pressure pad is connected to the monitor, when the person sits on the pressure pad the monitor is on and the circuit also switches on.

After two hours of continuous sitting, the buzzer gets on and after one-minute interval, the chair begins to vibrate and if you still refuse to get up, after one minute, the hot air blower is on forcing the person to get up from the seat. Still if the user refuses to get up, the monitor automatically shuts down.

Besides warning a person when he sits for unusually long time, the smart chair makes a person to exercise between work hours

The chair is modelled on the principle of healthy body and healthy mind. As the person has to take a break and walk for a while, it will increase productivity.

Manaswith Shankar has also developed a turbo pot prototype which fetched him a prize for ‘quick cooking’. Turbo pot is a high quality cookware that heats up twice as fast as regular cookware, saving time and LPG.