Face masks are, would be & ought to be a priority in personal health care kits, least in present and till a while in future. Continuous discomfort from wearing breathing mask or respirator or alike is obvious. Fact remains that its functionality is accomplished only when other people are around. This causes an on-off effect in masking ; people when socially close to others pull it up, and when socially distant (relatively alone) pull it down or even remove and pocket it. Not only is it an inconvenienced option, it can be an erroneous habit (forgetting many times to wear when mandatory). And frequent tinkering of protective nose-mouth device by not-always sanitized hands can increase chances of infection spreading. Mileage gained from use of mask can be lost or even overtaken by harm caused in such cases. Polices find it tough to differentiate or penalize this variable masking trend. A social contradiction, viz. wearing or not wearing mask is transformed to a technical contradiction and solution outputted is an adaptive mask with holes of varying size. A mask with dual-structure needs to be designed and manufactured; mask with holes far-apart when one is alone & same mask with holes closer-by when one is in a crowd. A functionally and structurally adaptive mask is being produced.
Dr Saurabh Kwatra Resolve is currently Expert, Smart Growth Operational Program, Horizon 2020, National Centre for Research & Development in Poland, Warsaw & Technical Head of Trimmed Innovations, an engineering by design consultancy based in Baltic and India. His book titled ‘Trimming, Miniaturization & Ideality via Convolution technique of TRIZ, Springer Germany, 2012 is used in technical courses to identify a technical contradiction inherent in a problem and thereafter to relax or resolve it. He is also a Jury/Mentor for Government of India startup grant-schemes at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Udaipur Incubation Center, IIM Udaipur and Workshop Lead on NanoMachines at TechFest, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai since last 4 years. He is a 4th level TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving in English) expert and Advanced Level Certificate holder in Industrial Design from IIT Delhi & Hero Motors (sister concern of Hero-Honda earlier). He completed his PhD (Industrial Design), 2002 from Hero School of CAD/CAM and then DSc in Innovation Management from Nelson Mandela University in 2017. Among charity projects proudly executed by Trimmed Innovations include solar-sensor lights carefully installed at heritage Christ Church Kasauli, Kasauli, Himalayas, India & micro-vertical wind turbine at Xavier Institute of Engineering, Mahim, Mumbai.
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