Streamline Bus Transit System, Voting Machines, Intelligent Traffic Control System, Autonomous Solar Street Light, Electronic Security and Switching System and PC-based Wireless Application Control. Wondering who has developed these products?
Well, not any reputed research labs or corporates but students of The Robotics Club of the Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technology(SNIST). Founded in 2007 by a few enthusiastic students, it provides a platform to students from different disciplines to come together and share knowledge.
“Acquiring and spreading knowledge in robotics is the governing motive behind the working of the club. Within a short span, it has grown to the level of an organisation that boasts of unparalleled strength and reputation,” says club’s founder-member A Pradeep Iyer.
The club aims not just at building robots for fun but also to inculcate that spirit of engineering among students which drives them to develop automation systems useful for the society, he explains.
The club is meant for every student from every branch in the college, as robotics is not just about mechanics or electronics. It is all about overcoming challenges in designing integrated systems like robots, adds another founder-member B Naga Chaitanya.
Since its inception, the club has undertaken numerous projects such as unmanned agricultural vehicle, all terrain navigator, pneumatic robotic arm, hydraulic robotic arm, automatic brake system, shooting robot, Streamline Bus Transit System, Voting Machines, Intelligent Traffic Control System, Autonomous Solar Street Light, Electronic Security and Switching System and PC-based Wireless Application Control.
Pradeep Iyer, who is presently working in a private firm, points out that ‘Robotic Vision’ has become a prominent area of research in the last decade. While structure and motion estimation from a video sequence has been an active topic for the last two decades.
The Postal department and BSNL officials are using voting machines developed by the club for their organisational polls. Even APSRTC officials have checked the Streamline Bus Transit System developed by the club, discloses its joint secretary V Nagendhar Reddy. Though the equipments developed by the club members are in an initial stage, interested organisations can carry forward the research, he says.
In fact, every year the club organises a national-level robotics festival titled “Roboveda”, meaning “knowledge in Robotics” in which thousands of students from various colleges from across the country participate. This year, around 500 out-station students, including, 232 from Puducherry participated in the event. The DRDO has sponsored Roboveda for about four years in the past and this time, it has been sponsored by AMI Tech.
Becoming a club member is, however, not easy. One has to take various tests before he or she is selected. Around 70 students are selected every year through a rigorous selection process.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Hyderabad / by Anil Kumar / ENS – Hyderabad / August 22nd, 2013