‘INNOVATIONS FOR YOU’; ‘THE INGENIOUS TINKERERS’

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Context

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) NITI Aayog released the second edition of ‘Innovations for You’ and another compendium titled ‘The Ingenious Tinkerers’.

About

The second edition of ‘Innovations for You’ is a compendium of innovations focused on agriculture featuring 70 start-ups supported by Atal incubation Centers (AICs) of AIM.
‘The Ingenious Tinkerers’ is a compendium on the innovations on technology featuring 41 innovations from Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) of India.

‘The Ingenious Tinkerers’ is a compilation of the top innovations created by young student innovators who participated in the ATL Marathon - which invites school students to address a problem that they see or face on a day-to-day basis.

Atal Innovation Mission

The Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a flagship initiative set up by the NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the length and breadth of the country.
AlM's objectives are to create and promote an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country at school, university, research institutions, MSME and industry levels.

Functions of Atal Innovation Mission

The Atal Innovation Mission shall have two core functions

Entrepreneurship promotion through Self-Employment and Talent Utilization, wherein innovators would be supported and mentored to become successful entrepreneurs.
Innovation promotion: to provide a platform where innovative ideas are generated.

Atal Innovation Mission: Initiatives

Atal Tinkering Labs-As mentioned, these are to create a problem-solving mindset across schools in India.
Atal Incubation Centers-These would help in fostering world-class startups and would also add some dimension to the incubator model.
Atal New India Challenges-These are charged to foster product innovations and align them as per the requirements of various sectors/ ministries.
Mentor India Campaign-It would create a national mentor network in public sectors, corporates and institutions in order to support the initiatives of Atal Innovation Mission.
Atal Community Innovation Center-This would create a community-centric innovation module and provide with ideas in the unserved /underserved regions of India.
ARISE-This would bring about an innovation and research in MSME industry.

Atal Tinkering Labs

With a vision to ‘Cultivate one Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators’, Atal Innovation Mission, an initiative of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), is establishing Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs) in schools across India.

Objectives

The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in young minds and inculcate skills such as design mind - set, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing, rapid calculations, measurements etc.
Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand what, how and why aspects of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

Key Features of ATL

ATL is a work space where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands on do-it-yourself mode; and learn innovation skills.
Young children get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).
ATL contains educational and learning ‘do it yourself’ kits and equipment on – science, electronics, robotics, open source microcontroller boards, sensors and 3D printers and computers.
In order to foster inventiveness among students, ATL can conduct different activities ranging from regional and national level competitions, exhibitions, workshops on problem solving, designing and fabrication of products, lecture series etc. at periodic intervals.

Financial Support

AIM provides a grant-in-aid that includes a one-time establishment cost of Rs. 10 lakh and operational expenses of Rs. 10 lakh for a maximum period of 5 years to each ATL.