Penza, 20 May 2016. PenzaNews. Alexander Sarantsev, student of the Zarechny children’s technical creativity center, member of the youth innovation center “Deistvuy,” presented a personal communicator for mobile- and speech-impaired people at the Intel ISEF children’s R&D contest in the United States.

Photo from Alexander Sarantsev’s personal archive

Russia sent a team of 29 best students to Intel ISEF-2016. Alexander Sarantsev joined its ranks after winning the MIFI research and practical conference “Junior.”

Only five members of the team went to the US with IT and robotics project.

Alexander Sarantsev’s device is designed for people with disabilities, such as palsy, that prevents them for communicating with other people and telling them about their pains.

The device works by registering changes in bioelectric potential in human muscles and transforming them into simple spoken phrases.

The projects were defended individually: the jury visited the info stand of each contestant and asked them to tell about their devices and discoveries. Those who did not speak English were assisted by volunteer translators.

Overall, this year’s Intel ISEF contest brought together around 1,500 contestants.

The Russian team won the second place in the Mathematics contest, third in Robotics, and one separate distinguished project award.

Even though Alexander Sarantsev was not named among the winners, he still said he considers participating in such an event a major achievement.

“It is the best to discuss with the guys of my age – they are already in the science and engineering from around the world; to see their projects, to evaluate my own – this is very valuable experience for me. According to the jury, our project has a very good level of technical execution. That means we can make international-class items here in Russia,” said the 17-year-old student.

According to him, he worked on his project almost every day for more than 8 months, and received extensive support from Dmitry Ilyushin, head of the Robotics and IT departments at Zarechny children’s technical creativity center and the youth innovation center “Deistvuy.”

“I think there are very few better teachers in electronics, programming and robotics than him. I learned a lot from him during the project – from making circuit boards to programming controllers. I received enormous experience and learned many new skills,” Alexander Sarantsev stressed.

In turn, Dmitry Ilyushin pointed out that his student can be already compared to a high-class engineer and only needed sporadic assistance to progress.