The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : A leg-operated tricycle for the physically challenged

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Tuesday, Jun 17, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

A leg-operated tricycle for the physically challenged

Deepa Kurup

Four students from MIT come up with an award-winning effort

USEFUL: The tricycle developed by students of M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology.

BANGALORE: A majority of engineering students will let you in on this rather public secret — and without batting an eyelid at that — that most of their college projects are either fabricated outside or completely outsourced to agencies that specialise in these projects.

However, this group of four from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MIT) has walked the road less taken, and the group says that it has made all the difference.

The group, comprising Karthik U., Shashikant S. Bhat, Shashank Kapoor and Shivaprasad C., under the guidance of H.D. Ramachandran, has conceived and developed a live model of a product which goes a long way on the social quotient: a wheelchair for physically challenged people to help them find their way up and down any staircase.

It won the award for the best project at Yantrotsav’08, an annual mechanical festival. However, this starry-eyed group says that the prize money does not begin to compare to the satisfaction of creating its own product.

“Most vehicles for the physically challenged are hand operated. We were surprised to find that there is no way a physically challenged person can climb stairs without an elevator or some paraphernalia,” says Shashikant.

It is interesting to note that the group that shared the first prize with it, shared its intent and made a leg-operated tricycle for physically challenged persons to ride.

Having no reference point to begin with, both in terms of design or material, these students started from scratch. “Firstly, it has not been done before by any college student or for that matter any professional group in the country. The only prototype available in the United States is much more expensive and complicated,” says Karthik.

So, what is it that inspired these young minds to take the road less travelled, and what did this project teach them that eight semesters of rigorous theory papers and practicals could never have?

“We invested many more man-hours than are prescribed by our syllabus but winning the contest and more importantly, being appreciated for our inventiveness is extremely rewarding,” says Shashank.

It is interesting to note that the only similar product which they could find was an iBot, a contraption which costs about Rs. 4 lakh in the market. The students proudly point out that their working model costs only Rs. 40,000.

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