Bangalore: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has suggested the creation of a World Knowledge Platform for the realisation of world-class products for commercial applications using the core competence of partner countries to meet the needs of many nations.

Addressing the Innovation and Leadership Forum organised by information technology giant IBM Corporation here on Tuesday, Mr. Kalam said his suggestion was based on the recent successful design, development, production and marketing of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, an India-Russia joint venture that has emerged as an innovative way of technology co-operation between India and other countries for multi-billion dollar business.

The Platform could undertake specific missions such as the joint design, development and manufacture of a handheld tablet personal computer (Tablet PC) with multi-lingual capability in a cost-effective manner with open source operating system and software configured for school students and common world citizens.

"Make life easy"

"The students should be able to use this as a digital book, notebook and as an e-learning device, which will reduce their carrying load and will be useful for their whole educational duration. The one-time investment must make the students' life easy ... that will give them enough time to be creative in their studies. The Tablet PC will have wireless connectivity so that it can take care of the communication needs and possibly the telephone and will have sufficient video capability to act as an entertainment platform and for tele-education and telemedicine and even a hand-writing recogniser that will also permit authentication for secure e-business transactions," he said.

However, the challenging task would be to configure, develop, produce and market the Tablet PC at a cost of $150 so that students, teachers and researchers of many nations could use it.

IBM could think of possible collaborations or consortium with Indian industries for the development of an integrated hardware and software system that would be useful to the 300 million Indian students alone apart from other common users.

Moreover, the design and development of embedded systems integrated with hardware would have great applications in the automobile sector, railways, consumer electronics, aerospace systems, defence systems and precision manufacturing.

For instance, automation of the railway signalling system with wireless relays would ensure foolproof signalling and prevent accidents. The design and development of Wi-Max standard switches, routers and access points would have a big market for last mile connectivity in many countries at an affordable cost.

"The concept of World Knowledge Platform can be utilised by information, communication and technology companies for collaborative research, development, production and marketing of products and systems using a consortium approach." He said the convergence of bio, nano and information and communication technology would be one of its missions.

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