Meerut: A 23-year-old Meerut youth has bagged this year's prestigious Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award for developing “black box” for vehicles, a low-cost device which will alert emergency services at the time of accident.

On Board Diagnostic Data Analysis System (OBDAS) will not only send the location of the vehicle to the emergency services at the time of accident, but will also help automobile and insurance companies to track “real-time data” of the vehicle which can further be used in knowing the performance evaluation of the car to settle claims.

Archit Agarwal, a fourth year engineering student of University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Uttarakhand was given the award on March 19 at Festival of Innovations (FOIN) organised in Rashtrapati Bhavan. He was chosen for this award under the 'Most Innovative Product' category.

According to Archit, the device will help in preventing deaths in vehicular accidents.

A resident of Meerut's Sadar area, Archit is pursuing B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from UPES. He has four patents published in the field of automotive electronics and consumer electronics.

“After carefully examining the data of accidents in India, I found that majority of deaths took place because emergency services could not reach the spot on time. So, I planned to make OBDAS. It has a black box, which will be fitted below the steering wheel and another device that will be fitted on the dash board,” he told TOI.