It gives out a low whine, but very active
MEERCAT DOES not eat fish, drink milk or chase mice, much less bare its claws and growl menacingly when forced into a corner. Only a low whine and an occasional purr indicate that it is moving swiftly across the floor.
For Meercat is a robot named after the agile feline that lives in desert areas and is quite at home in a rugged terrain. Built of tough metal, insulating plastic, electric motors and electronic sensors, the robot is the cherished creation of a team of engineering students at Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences Deemed University, Coimbatore. Team leader, S. Aloysius Deepak said that his team had demonstrated the gadget at `Techfest 2005' at the Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay (IIM-B) at Mumbai, and won the `Best design' award for the use of fibre-reinforced polymer.
However, the prize had come only after much frenzied work to set right malfunctioning systems and fix mechanical failures.
At first sight, the remote-controlled Meercat does not seem very impressive, for it seems nothing more than a metallic box with four wheels fitted with independent suspension systems.
A rugged gear train transfers driving power from the battery-powered motors, enabling the device to move forward, turn from side to side and even climb over small obstacles. It can fall from the surface of a table and continue running on the ground with all its systems functioning normally. Using the differential gear train, the robot can turn round in a full circle, even while remaining on the same spot on the ground. With the input provided by its electronic sensors, the robot easily follows a white line drawn on the floor, correctly tracking curves and turns.
"Being part of a team is the best way to perform incredible feats of endurance and overcome hardship. We learnt this working to build the Meercat," said the team members in their multimedia presentation of the project.
N. L. Sridharan, J. D. Theodore Kirupakaran, M. Anand and C. Shelton John of Karunya Deemed University are proud of creating a speed breaker generating electricity to power streetlights.
These final year students of mechanical engineering noticed that 5,000 to 10,000 vehicles trundled along the average highway on a single day. Now the challenge was to find out if they could construct a speed breaker that would function as a power generation unit.
After some tests and experiments, they constructed a flexible speed breaker that was hardy enough to resist the constant passage of large and heavy vehicles for several hours a day. A rack-and-pinion arrangement converted the up and down motion of the flexible speed breaker into circular motion that rotated the generator shaft. Electricity from the generator went into a storage battery that powered the streetlights connected to the prototype that the students had designed.
A.A.Michael Raj
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Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
