The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Madurai News : ‘Smart vest’ developed by DRRO for Indian soldiers in high altitudes

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Thursday, Jan 08, 2009
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Tamil Nadu - Madurai

‘Smart vest’ developed by DRRO for Indian soldiers in high altitudes

Special Correspondent

Made of stuff that automatically adjusts for cold, hot temperature

— Photo: K. Ganesan.

Meet: A. Sivathanu Pillai (second from left), Chief Controller of DRDO, at the conference in Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai on Wednesday. Karumuttu T. Kannan (left), vice-chairman and correspondent, TCE, and V. Abhaikumar, Principal, look on.

MADURAI: For Indian soldiers deployed in high altitudes such as Siachen, a ‘smart vest’ has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) with materials that automatically adjust for cold and hot temperatures.

The specially made banians were designed at the DRDO laboratory in Bangalore under the concept of ‘smart engineered textiles’ for supply to soldiers, according to A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Controller for Research and Development, Ministry of Defence.

“The smart vests will be integrated with sensors and wearable monitoring system. It will be able to monitor the ECG of soldiers on duty at high altitudes. Besides, the vest provides physiological comfort too,” he said here on Wednesday.

Dr. Sivathanu Pillai made a power-point presentation at the inaugural function of an ‘International conference on active/smart materials’ organised by the Department of Physics, Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE), drawing scientists and experts from various institutions in the country and abroad.

The smart vest generates the data on body condition of the soldier and passes it on to the ground where it will be analysed by doctors for giving appropriate medical attention. He dwelt at length on the latest theme in science, “putting mind into the machine and making it smart,” and the use of smart materials in the field of defence research and applications. Karumuttu T. Kannan, correspondent, TCE, who presided over the function, said that teaching institutions should graduate to the levels of advanced research as “mundane activity of day-to-day teaching alone is not sufficient.”

“Teaching staff of engineering colleges must re-launch themselves to undertake research projects and must realise that educational institutions can never remain static,” Mr. Kannan said.

M. Mahendran, conference convener and associate professor in Department of Physics, explained that the international conference aimed at exploring the field of material sciences. Totally 175 papers would be presented at the conference and the message being sent out was that smart materials should go from research laboratory to industry, he said. V. Abhaikumar, Principal, stressed that material science was the next big thing that would influence human civilisation. J. M. Barandiaran, professor, Basque University in Bilbao, Spain, released an abstract book on smart materials.

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