Indra’s Drishtikona (Viewpoint)

IITians Innovate

Posted : April 21, 2006 at 6:31 pm [IST]

In last few months, I have been trying to assist Yamuna. When there is nothing much serious to do after retirement, perhaps that is the only place where one can get some satisfaction. Let me confess I did never liked that and not even today. But once in it I try to enjoy it. I try to keep on innovating. And who says there is so much unemployment in India, it is no easier to find a good person these days to assist in routine home running at an affordable price and with certain surety.

All these days, I was trying to make roti or chapatti round, but I failed every time and Yamuna laughed. I was happy to know that in IITians’ list of innovations is one roti-maker. Perhaps for them too ‘it has been the necessity that led them to this innovation or invention. I found the story reporting ‘Open House’ - IIT-Delhi’s annual event, interesting.

The brainy Delhi IITians have made a smaller prototype of a chappati-maker to suit their needs. And they did it in a style typical of engineers: after studying the designs and working of bigger a chappati-maker.

“I looked into the matter, scouted out for a chappati-maker, only to find one which produced 10,000 chappatis an hour. Then some of the students and professors studied the designs, working of the machine… and then made a smaller prototype of the machine to suit our needs of around 1,000-1,500 chappatis per hour,” said professor S.M. Ishtiaque, dean of students, IIT-D.
“To serve around 1,500 chappatis to 450 students in each hostel within one hour was no mean task. But now a couple of people can easily produce around 1,500 chappatis in less than an hour,” said cook at Nilgiri Hostel.

Finally, they got models of the prototype installed in all the hostels, each one of them costing around Rs 4-5 lakh, comfortably to produce 1,000 to 1,200 chappatis per hour for the daily meals.
Ishtiaque promises not to stop with this. “In this kitchen automation drive, I have my eyes set on a prototype peda-making machine.”

Is not IIT in innovative mood? It is clearly visible at Open House - the institute’s annual event.

One of the popular exhibits was the mechanised railway inspection trolley.

“Initial research into this area revealed that the inspection trolley in its present form weighs 150 kg and has to be manually driven. It also requires a crew of at least two railway inspectors along with four trolley men for pushing the trolley. Its weight consumes huge amount of time and energy to remove it from the tracks.

Gupta has attempted to incorporate practical aspects. “We have a mechanised trolley that uses the basic pedal mechanism of the bicycle. It weighs only 77.5 kg. The trolley requires only one person to drive it. It can be safely removed from the tracks. With each of these trolleys, which costs only Rs 3,600, almost 50 per cent man power can be reduced and double the efficiency.”

Further in the exhibition was the ‘Leaves collector’, created by an enthusiastic group of second-year mechanical engineering students. The device is a modified lawn mower, but also takes care of scattered leaves, paper and other junk. And the device can multitask too. The best part is it doesn’t need any power to run.

Fourth year students of Computer Science and Engineering - Nitin Jindal and Shubham Singhal, have developed a fully automated surveillance system that generates intelligent object information from surveillance videos in real-time It can give police a shot in the arm and can come in handy at public places like malls, airports, railways stations, parking lots and Metro stations.

Some other exhibits include an ultra violet protection umbrella, which provides screening from harmful solar radiations with a high value of ultra violet protection factor, and a “defluoridation” apparatus for underground water with huge potential in our country.

I wish the professors and teachers would have come out with so more down-to-earth innovations for the rural India. One such project in my opinion should be any thing to help rural India in solving its energy problem through biomass equipment or mini -distillation facilities for Jatropa seeds that can go straight in tractor or pump engines.

With the number of engineering graduates running in lakhs, India can innovate thousands of new marketable products. All those heading the institutes must go for such events and corporate India must sponser that in big way.

- Indra

Category: Employment/Education |