The Hindu : National : Step aside IIT-M, the real brains are in the suburbs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

National

National

Step aside IIT-M, the real brains are in the suburbs

By K. RamachandranBy K. Ramachandran

Sri Sai Ram Engineering students, R.C. Aravindakshan and R.S. Bharath with `I cane'.

CHENNAI, SEPT. 28. Step aside, IIT-Madras and Anna University: it's time to make way for a new set of stars from the suburbs. For students from the above two institutions, so long accustomed to viewing themselves as the elite of the engineering streams, it might come as something of a shock to find out that their `poorer cousins' are now sprinting ahead in the international arena.

For the disbelieving, here are a few facts. Top-class research papers and innovative ideas are no longer the exclusive domain of students of IIT-Madras or Anna University. Students of unaided engineering colleges are cranking out absolutely first-rate stuff these days.

Take for instance, a bright young duo from Sri Sai Ram Engineering, West Tambaram, R.C. Aravindakshan and R.S. Bharath (II year Computer Sciences and Engineering). They have jointly developed the "I-Cane" or intelligent cane that helps visually impaired persons. The cane has a guidance motor and a computerised `brain' and scanner that warns the user about obstacles -- pits, bumps, objects, or overhanging wires, branches or other static obstacles. It also factors in dynamic obstacles, though this is yet to be perfected.

Aravindakshan is bursting with pride and with good reason: he has an invitation from organisers of Robomaxx 2004 to display the `I-cane' in Grants Pass, Oregon, U.S. next month. He and Bharath are, meanwhile, trying to cut the weight of the cane to less than a kilo.

Arvindakshan points out that safety is the biggest concern for visually impaired persons. "Walking or taking the next step comes naturally to normal persons, not so for these people. I want to perfect the equipment before going commercial. We are in the process of patenting the idea ... " he adds.

A private company, Essem Systems, is helping them fabricate the parts for the cane, with three IIT professors S. Ramesh, G.T. Manohar and Ravindran and Sri Sairam College's head of computer sciences department Saravanan guiding the youngsters.

A versatile sniffer robot developed by P Rajan, A Raja and E. Lavakumar, of the same college, won the "Innovation potential of students" project award this year from the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Triumphant return

S. Gayatri

Two third-year Electronics and Communication Engineering students of Velammal Engineering College, V.K. Lakshmanan and S. Gayatri, created ripples at an international meet on nano-technologies at the Technical University of Munich, Germany last month. They were the youngest and the only two undergraduate participants at the meet.

Their paper, "A Basic Architecture for a Multi-state Memory System Using Nano-Antennas," described an architecture to improve the memory states from `two' to `n' states -- thereby representing more than one bit per state.

The students won 400 euros (Rs.23,000) each for the best research paper award. The August 16-19 conference dealt with the latest advancements in nanostructure, nanophotonics, nanomaterials and their applications.

Says Lakshmanan, "The optical memory systems supporting present day computers use two-state memories (which represent 1's & 0's).

To increase the memory capacity one can increase the media density and reading speed. But this has its own limitations.

Our paper describes how the memory capacity can be increased by increasing the number of states that a memory system can represent. If a memory system can have four states, then each state can represent two bits each, thereby doubling the memory capacity i.e. (00,01,10,11) for each state.

V.K. Lakshmanan

The conference organisers readily accepted the paper and even waived the registration fee. Velammal Engineering College and a teacher at the IIT-Madras, M. Kumaravel helped them raise the air fare and other expenses for the five-day trip.

After their interaction with foreign scientists, the two say they hope to pursue post graduation in material and nano-material sciences.

Innovative software

Commercial software makers are eyeing another development, this time by a woman student of Jeppiaar Engineering. This is a "combination of front-end and back-end" created by B. Shanmugapriya, a computer sciences student.

With this, one can use the same tool to create front-end controls such as labels and text boxes and creating tables. "It has only one data type `Text' to view, add, delete, update and modify the design and contents of the table. Essentially it provides an inbuilt connectivity between the front-end and back-end," she adds.

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