South View Student Takes Technology to Next Level

There are plenty of portable scanners on the market, but none quite like the one 14-year-old Abhi Nayar designed. Dubbed the Scan.Save, Nayar’s creation is free from wires and operates without the use of a computer. 

Abhi can’t pinpoint when he first became interested in science, saying it goes back farther than he can remember.

“I’ve always been interested in how things work and how to make things better,” Abhi Nayar said.

His father, Rajeev Nayar, agreed.

“He’s always been a curious kid,” Rajeev said. “He’s always been somebody who asks a lot of questions and tries to understand.” 

Fred Mutchler, a Project Lead the Way technology and engineering teacher at South View Middle School, saw Abhi’s potential.

“The kid is a brainiac,” he said.

Mutchler suggested Abhi develop a project for the Twin Cities Regional Science Fair, even offering to be his mentor. 

“The word mentor is perfect because I wasn’t giving him specific results or telling him how to do this or that, but just supporting him,” Mutchler said.

Competing in the Technological Innovation category against more than 100 other students, Abhi took fourth place in his category and was selected as an alternate for the State Science and Engineering Fair. He was also honored with the United States Army Commended Award for the project. The Twin Cities Regional Science Fair draws approximately 500 students from Ramsey, Hennepin, Washington and Dakota Counties.

The Technological Innovation category involves more work with regards to developing a particular design, product or invention as opposed to purely research. The main research necessary for Abhi’s invention was to ensure the product didn’t already exist. When he was confident it didn’t, he could move ahead with his design.

That said, Abhi may have had the latest start of all the projects in the competition. Originally going with a project he called True Sight, a screen reader for the blind, Abhi abandoned it in favor of working on the Scan.Save after running into coding issues. He did not switch projects until February, the same month as the Science Fair.

As necessity is the mother of invention, Abhi first came up with the idea for his Scan.Save last year when he wanted to show his father—who was in Chicago for business—a math problem he was working on. The process of scanning, uploading to a computer, saving and sending was relatively tedious. As a ninth-grader with interests spanning music, theater, sports and video game design, Abhi has limited time and he didn’t want to spend it needlessly.

“Why can’t you have a portable scanner with WiFi?” he wondered.

You can’t yet. All the portable scanners on the market require the use of a computer in some capacity. But if Abhi’s design is patented and sold (as is his ultimate goal), there will be another option for busy 14-year-olds and the rest of us.

The beauty of the Scan.Save is that it can send scanned images itself via wireless connection to online storage, such as Picasa, Flickr or your own website without the aid of cords or computer.

A working model of Abhi’s exact design would be expensive to create, though the framework is in place. For the Science Fair, Abhi modified an existing wired scanner to use in demonstrations.

When he’s not working on technological innovations, Abhi’s main hobby is 3D modeling and graphic design. He has already partnered with two others from Czechoslovakia and the UK, which he has worked with to create and sell 3D model and graphics packs. 

Abhi Nayar may have plans to patent a game-changing scanner and already be selling his video game designs online, but Abhi’s mother Manju Nayar assures us he’s just like any other teenager.

“He is a typical disorganized teen who is 14 but thinks he is 40,” she said.